THE DAUGHTER OF 
THE STORAGE 



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HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 



THE DAUGHTER 
OF THE STORAGE 

AND OTHER THINGS 
IN PROSE AND VERSE- 



W. D. HOWELLS 




HARPER 6* BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 



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The Daughter of the Storage 



Copyright, 191 5, 1916, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published April, 1916 

D-Q 



APR 27 1916 ' 

©CI.A427838 



^ 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Daughter of the Storage 3 

II. A Presentiment 45 

III. Captain Dunlevy's Last Trip 67 

IV. The Return to Favor 81 

V. Somebody's Mother 93 

VI. The Face at the Window 107 

VII. An Experience 117 

VIII. The Boarders 127 

IX. Breakfast Is My Best Meal 141 

X. The Mother-Bird 151 

XI. The Amigo 161 

XII. Black Cross Farm 173 

XIII. The Critical Bookstore 185 

XIV. A Feast of Reason 227 

XV. City and Country in the Fall . . * . . . 243 

XVI. Table Talk . 253 

XVII. The Escapade of a Grandfather 269 

XVIII. Self-sacrifice: A Farce-tragedy 285 

XIX. The Night before Christmas 319 



THE DAUGHTER OF 
THE STORAGE 



THE DAUGHTER OF 
THE STORAGE 



T^HEY were getting some of their things out to 
* send into the country, and Forsyth had left 
his work to help his wife look them over and decide 
which to take and which to leave. The things 
were mostly trunks that they had stored the fall 
before; there were some tables and Colonial 
bureaus inherited from his mother, and some mir- 
rors and decorative odds and ends, which they 
would not want in the furnished house they had 
taken for the summer. There were some canvases 
which Forsyth said he would paint out and use 
for other subjects, but which, when he came to 
look at again, he found really not so bad. The 
rest, literally, was nothing but trunks; there were, 
of course, two or three boxes of books. When they 
had been packed closely into the five-dollar room, 

3 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

with the tables and bureaus and mirrors and can- 
vases and decorative odds and ends put carefully 
on top, the Forsyths thought the effect very neat, 
and laughed at themselves for being proud of it. 

They spent the winter in Paris planning for the 
summer in America, and now it had come May, a 
month which in New York is at its best, and in 
the Constitutional Storage Safe-Deposit Ware- 
house is by no means at its worst. The Constitu- 
tional Storage is no longer new, but when the 
Forsyths were among the first to store there it 
was up to the latest moment in the modern per- 
fections of a safe-deposit warehouse. It was 
strictly fire-proof; and its long, white, brick-walled, 
iron-doored corridors, with their clean concrete 
floors, branching from a central avenue to the tall 
windows north and south, offered perspectives 
sculpturesquely bare, or picturesquely heaped 
with arriving or departing household stuff. 

When the Forsyths went to look at it a nice 
young fellow from the office had gone with them; 
running ahead and switching on rows of electrics 
down the corridors, and then, with a wire-basketed 
electric lamp, which he twirled about and held 
aloft and alow, showing the dustless, sweet- 
smelling spaciousness of a perfect five-dollar room. 
He said it would more than hold their things; 
and it really held them. 

4 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

Now, when the same young fellow unlocked the 
iron door and set it wide, he said he would get 
them a man, and he got Mrs. Forsyth a gilt arm- 
chair from some furniture going into an adjoining 
twenty-dollar room. She sat down in it, and "Of 
course/ ' she said, "the pieces I want will be at 
the very back and the very bottom. Why don't 
you get yourself a chair, too, Ambrose? What 
are you looking at?" 

With his eyes on the neighboring furniture he 
answered, "Seems to be the wreck of a million- 
aire's happy home; parlor and kitchen utensils 
and office furniture all in white and gold." 

"Horrors, yes!" Mrs. Forsyth said, without 
turning her head from studying her trunks, as 
if she might divine their contents from their 
outside. 

"Tata and I," her husband said, "are more 
interested in the millionaire's things." Tata, it 
appeared, was not a dog, but a child; the name 
was not the diminutive of her own name, which 
was Charlotte, but a generic name for a doll, which 
Tata had learned from her Italian nurse to apply 
to all little girls and had got applied to herself 
by her father. She was now at a distance down 
the corridor, playing a drama with the pieces of 
millionaire furniture; as they stretched away in 
variety and splendor they naturally suggested 

5 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

personages of princely quality, and being touched 
with her little forefinger tip were capable of enter- 
ing warmly into Tata's plans for them. 

Her mother looked over her shoulder toward 
the child. "Come here, Tata," she called, and 
when Tata, having enjoined some tall mirrors to 
secrecy with a frown and a shake of the head, ran 
to her, Mrs. Forsyth had forgotten why she had 
called her. "Oh!" she said, recollecting, "do you 
know which your trunk is, Tata? Can you show 
mamma? Can you put your hand on it?" 

The child promptly put her hand on the end of a 
small box just within her tiptoe reach, and her 
mother said, "I do believe she knows everything 
that's in it, Ambrose! That trunk has got to be 
opened the very first one!" 

The man that the young fellow said he would 
send showed at the far end of the corridor, smaller 
than human, but enlarging himself to the average 
Irish bulk as he drew near. He was given in- 
structions and obeyed with caressing irony Mrs. 
Forsyth's order to pull out Tata's trunk first, and 
she found the key in a large tangle of keys, and 
opened it, and had the joy of seeing everything 
recognized by the owner: doll by doll, cook-stove, 
tin dishes, small brooms, wooden animals on feet 
and wheels, birds of various plumage, a toy piano, 
a dust-pan, alphabet blocks, dog's-eared linen 

6 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

Mother Goose books, and the rest. Tata had been 
allowed to put the things away herself, and she 
took them out with no apparent sense of the time 
passed since she saw them last. In the changing 
life of her parents all times and places were alike 
to her. She began to play with the things in the 
storage corridor as if it were yesterday when she 
saw them last in the flat. Her mother and father 
left her to them in the distraction of their own 
trunks. Mrs. Forsyth had these spread over the 
space toward the window and their lids lifted and 
tried to decide about them. In the end she had 
changed the things in them back and forth till she 
candidly owned that she no longer knew where 
anything at all was. 

As she raised herself for a moment's respite 
from the problem she saw at the far end of the 
corridor a lady with two men, who increased in 
size like her own man as they approached. The 
lady herself seemed to decrease, though she re- 
mained of a magnificence to match the furniture, 
and looked like it as to her dress of white picked 
out in gold when she arrived at the twenty-dollar 
room next the Forsyths\ In her advance she had 
been vividly played round by a little boy, who 
ran forward and back and easily doubled the 
length of the corridor before he came to a stand 
and remained with his brown eyes fixed on Tata. 

7 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

Tata herself had blue eyes, which now hovered 
dreamily above the things in her trunk. 

The two mothers began politely to ignore each 
other. She of the twenty-dollar room directed the 
men who had come with her, and in a voice of 
authority and appeal at once commanded and 
consulted them in the disposition of her belongings. 
At the sound of the mixed tones Mrs. Forsyth 
signaled to her husband, and, when he came within 
whispering, murmured: " Pittsburg, or Chicago. 
Did you ever hear such a Mid- Western accent !" 
She pretended to be asking him about repacking 
the trunk before her, but the other woman was not 
deceived. She was at least aware of criticism in 
the air of her neighbors, and she put on greater 
severity with the workmen. The boy came up and 
caught her skirt. "What?" she said, bending 
over. "No, certainly not. I haven't time to 
attend to you. Go off and play. Don't I tell 
you no? Well, there, then! Will you get that 
trunk out where I can open it? That small one 
there," she said to one of the men, while the other 
rested for both. She stooped to unlock the trunk 
and flung up the lid. ' ' Now if you bother me any 
more I will surely — " But she lost herself short 
of the threat and began again to seek counsel and 
issue orders. 

The boy fell upon the things in the trunk, which 

8 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

were the things of a boy, as those in Tata's trunk 
were the things of a girl, and to run with them, 
one after another, to Tata and to pile them in gift 
on the floor beside her trunk. He did not stop 
running back and forth as fast as his short, fat 
legs could carry him till he had reached the bottom 
of his box, chattering constantly and taking no 
note of the effect with Tata. Then, as she made 
no response whatever to his munificence, he began 
to be abashed and to look pathetically from her to 
her father. 

"Oh, really, young man," Forsyth said, "we 
can't let you impoverish yourself at this rate. 
What have you said to your benefactor, Tata? 
What are you going to give him?" 

The children did not understand his large 
words, but they knew he was affectionately mock- 
ing them. 

"Ambrose," Mrs. Forsyth said, "you mustn't 
let him." 

"I'm trying to think how to hinder him, but it's 
rather late," Forsyth answered, and then the 
boy's mother joined in. 

"Indeed, indeed, if you can, it's more than I 
can. You're just worrying the little girl," she said 
to the boy. 

"Oh no, he isn't, dear little soul," Mrs. Forsyth 
said, leaving her chair and going up to the two 

9 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE; STORAGE 

children. She took the boy's hand in hers. 
"What a kind boy! But you know my little girl 
mustn't take all your playthings. If you'll give 
her one she'll give you one, and that will be 
enough. You can both play with them all for 
the present." She referred her suggestion to the 
boy's mother, and the two ladies met at the 
invisible line dividing the five-dollar room from 
the twenty-dollar room. 

"Oh yes, indeed," the Mid-Westerner said, 
willing to meet the New-Yorker half-way. ' ' You're 
taking things out, I see. I hardly know which 
is the worst : taking out or putting in." 

"Well, we are just completing the experience," 
Mrs. Forsyth said. "I shall be able to say better 
how I feel in half an hour." 

"You don't mean this is the first time you've 
stored? I suppose we've been in and out of 
storage twenty times. Not in this warehouse 
exactly; we've never been here before." 

"It seems very nice," Mrs. Forsyth suggested. 

"They all do at the beginning. I suppose if 
we ever came to the end they would seem nicer 
still. Mr. Bream's business is always taking him 
away" (it appeared almost instantly that he was 
the international inspector of a great insurance 
company's agencies in Europe and South America), 
"and when I don't go with him it seems easier 

10 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

to break up and go into a hotel than to go on 
housekeeping. I don't know that it is, though/ ' 
she questioned. "It's so hard to know what to 
do with the child in a hotel.' ' 

"Yes, but he seems the sort that you could 
manage with anywhere," Mrs. Forsyth agreed 
and disagreed. 

His mother looked at him where he stood beam- 
ing upon Tata and again joyfully awaiting some 
effect with her. But the child sat back upon her 
small heels with her eyes fixed on the things in 
her trunk and made no sign of having seen the 
heaps of his gifts. 

The Forsyths had said to each other before this 
that their little girl was a queer child, and now 
they were not so much ashamed of her apparent 
selfishness or rude indifference as they thought 
they were. They made a joke of it with the boy's 
mother, who said she did not believe Tata was 
anything but shy. She said she often told Mr. 
Bream that she did wish Peter — yes, that was his 
name; she didn't like it much, but it was his 
grandfather's; was Tata a Christian name? Oh, 
just a pet name! Well, it was pretty — could be 
broken of his ridiculous habit; most children — 
little boys, that was — held onto their things so. 

Forsyth would have taken something from 
Tata and given it to Peter; but his wife would 

ii 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

not let him; and he had to content himself with 
giving Peter a pencil of his own that drew red 
at one end and blue at the other, and that at 
once drew a blue boy, that looked like Peter, on 
the pavement. He told Peter not to draw a boy 
now, but wait till he got home, and then be care- 
ful not to draw a blue boy with the red end. He 
helped him put his things back into his trunk, 
and Peter seemed to enjoy that, too. 

Tata, without rising from her seat on her heels, 
watched the restitution with her dreamy eyes; 
she paid no attention to the blue boy on the pave- 
ment ; pictures from her father were nothing new 
to her. The mothers parted with expressions of 
mutual esteem in spite of their difference of accent 
and fortune. Mrs. Forsyth asked if she might 
not kiss Peter, and did so; he ran to his mother 
and whispered to her; then he ran back and 
gave Tata so great a hug that she fell over 
from it. 

Tata did not cry, but continued as if lost in 
thought which she could not break from, and that 
night, after she had said her prayers with her 
mother, her mother thought it was time to ask 
her: "Tata, dear, why did you act so to that 
boy to-day? Why didn't you give him some- 
thing of yours when he brought you all his things? 
Why did you act so oddly ?" 

12 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

Tata said something in a voice so low that her 
mother could not make it out. 

"What did you say?" 

"I couldn't tell which," the child still whis- 
pered; but now her mother's ear was at her 
lips. 

"How, which?" 

"To give him. The more I looked," and the 
whisper became a quivering breath, "the more I 
couldn't tell which. And I wanted to give them 
all to him, but I couldn't tell whether it would be 
right, because you and papa gave them to me for 
birthday and Christmas," and the quivering 
breath broke into a sobbing grief, so that the 
mother had to catch the child up to her heart. 

"Dear little tender conscience!" she said, still 
wiping her eyes when she told the child's father, 
and they fell into a sweet, serious talk about her 
before they slept. "And I was ashamed of her 
before that woman! I know she misjudged her; 
but we ought to have remembered how fine and 
precious she is, and known how she must have 
suffered, trying to decide." 

"Yes, conscience," the father said. "And tem- 
perament, the temperament to which decision is 
martyrdom." 

"And she will always have to be deciding! 
She'll have to decide for you, some day, as I 

13 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

do now; you are very undecided, Ambrose — she 
gets it from you." 



ii 

The Forsyths were afraid that Tata might want 
to offer Peter some gift in reparation the next 
morning, and her father was quite ready, if she 
said so, to put off their leaving town, and go with 
her to the Constitutional Storage, which was the 
only address of Mrs. Bream that he knew. But 
the child had either forgotten or she was contented 
with her mother's comforting, and no longer felt 
remorse. 

One does not store the least of one's personal 
or household gear without giving a hostage to 
storage, a pledge of allegiance impossible to break. 
No matter how few things one puts in, one never 
takes everything out; one puts more things in. 
Mrs. Forsyth went to the warehouse with Tata 
in the fall before they sailed for another winter 
in Paris, and added some old bits she had picked 
up at farm-houses in their country drives, and 
they filled the room quite to the top. She told 
her husband how Tata had entered into the spirit 
of putting back her trunk of playthings with the 
hope of seeing it again in the spring; and she 
added that she had now had to take a seven-fifty 

14 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

room without consulting him, or else throw away 
the things they had brought home. 

During the ten or twelve years that followed, 
the Forsyths sometimes spent a whole winter in 
a hotel; sometimes they had a flat; sometimes 
they had a separate dwelling. If their housing was 
ample, they took almost everything out of stor- 
age; once they got down to a two-dollar bin, and 
it seemed as if they really were leaving the stor- 
age altogether. Then, if they went into a flat 
that was nearly all studio, their furniture went 
back in a cataclysmal wave to the warehouse, 
where a ten-dollar room, a twelve-dollar room, 
would not dam the overflow. 

Tata, who had now outgrown her pet name, 
and was called Charlotte because her mother 
felt she ought to be, always went with her to the 
storage to help look the things over, to see the 
rooms emptied down to a few boxes, or replenished 
to bursting. In the first years she played about, 
close to her mother; as she grew older she ven- 
tured further, and began to make friends with 
other little girls who had come with their mothers. 
It was quite safe socially to be in the Constitu- 
tional Storage; it gave standing; and Mrs. 
Forsyth fearlessly chanced acquaintance with these 
mothers, who would sometimes be there whole 
long mornings or afternoons, taking trunks out or 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

putting them in. With the trunks set into the 
corridors and opened for them, they would spend 
the hours looking the contents over, talking to 
their neighbors, or rapt in long silences when 
they hesitated with things held off or up, and, 
after gazing absently at them, putting them back 
again. Sometimes they varied the process by 
laying things aside for sending home, and receipt- 
ing for them at the office as " goods selected/' 

They were mostly hotel people or apartment 
people, as Mrs. Forsyth oftenest was herself, but 
sometimes they were separate - house people. 
Among these there was one family, not of great 
rank or wealth, but distinguished, as lifelong New- 
Yorkers, in a world of comers and goers of every 
origin. Mrs. Forsyth especially liked them for a 
certain quality, but what this quality was she 
could not very well say. They were a mother 
with two daughters, not quite old maids, but on 
the way to it, and there was very intermittently 
the apparently bachelor brother of the girls; at 
the office Mrs. Forsyth verified her conjecture 
that he was some sort of minister. One could 
see they were all gentlefolks, though the girls 
were not of the last cry of fashion. They were 
very nice to their mother, and you could tell that 
they must have been coming with her for years. 

At this point in her study of them for her 
16 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

husband's amusement she realized that Charlotte 
had been coming to the storage with her nearly- 
all her life, and that more and more the child had 
taken charge of the uneventual inspection of the 
things. She was shocked to think that she had 
let this happen, and now she commanded her 
husband to say whether Charlotte would grow 
into a storage old maid like those good girls. 

Forsyth said, Probably not before her time; but 
he allowed it was a point to be considered. 

Very well, then, Mrs. Forsyth said, the child 
should never go again; that was all. She had 
strongly confirmed herself in this resolution when 
one day she not only let the child go again, but 
she let her go alone. The child was now between 
seventeen and eighteen, rather tall, grave, pretty, 
with the dull brown hair that goes so well with 
dreaming blue eyes, and of a stiff grace. She 
had not come out yet, because she had always 
been out, handing cakes at her father's studio 
teas long before she could remember not doing it, 
and later pouring for her mother with rather a 
quelling air as she got toward fifteen. During 
these years the family had been going and com- 
ing between Europe and America; they did not 
know perfectly why, except that it was easier 
than not. 

More and more there was a peculiarity in the 
2 17 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

goods selected by Charlotte for sending home, 
which her mother one day noted. "How is it, 
Charlotte, that you always send exactly the 
things I want, and when you get your own things 
here you don't know whether they are what you 
wanted or not?" 

"Because I don't know when I send them. I 
don't choose them; I can't." 

"But you choose the right things for me?" 

"No, I don't, mother. I just take what comes 
first, and you always like it." 

"Now, that is nonsense, Charlotte. I can't 
have you telling me such a thing as that. It's 
an insult to my intelligence. Do you think I 
don't know my own mind?" 

"I don't know my mind," the girl said, so per- 
sistently, obstinately, stubbornly, that her mother 
did not pursue the subject for fear of worse. 

She referred it to her husband, who said: "Per- 
haps it's like poets never being able to remember 
their own poetry. I've heard it's because they 
have several versions in their minds when they 
write and can't remember which they've written. 
Charlotte has several choices in her mind, and 
can't choose between her choices." 

"Well, we ought to have broken her of her 
indecision. Some day it will make her very 
unhappy." 

18 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

"Pretty hard to break a person of her tem- 
perament/ ' Forsyth suggested. 

"I know it!" his wife admitted, with a certain 
pleasure in realizing the fact. "I don't know 
what we shall do." 



in 

Storage society was almost wholly feminine; in 
rare instances there was a man who must have 
been sent in dearth of women or in an hour of 
their disability. Then the man came hastily, 
with a porter, and either pulled all the things 
out of the rooms so that he could honestly say 
he had seen them, and that the thing wanted 
was not there; or else merely had the doors 
opened, and after a glance inside resolved to wait 
till his wife, or mother, or daughter could come. 
He agreed in guilty eagerness with the workmen 
that this was the only way. 

The exception to the general rule was a young 
man who came one bright spring morning when all 
nature suggested getting one's stuff out and going 
into the country, and had the room next the 
Forsyths' original five-dollar room opened. As 
it happened, Charlotte was at the moment visit- 
ing this room upon her mother's charge to see 
whether certain old scrim sash-curtains, which 

19 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

they had not needed for ages but at last simply 
must have, were not lurking there in a chest of 
general curtainings. The Forsyths now had 
rooms on other floors, but their main room was 
at the end of the corridor branching northward 
from that where the five-dollar room was. Near 
this main room that nice New York family had 
their rooms, and Charlotte had begun the morning 
in their friendly neighborhood, going through some 
chests that might perhaps have the general cur- 
tainings in them and the scrim curtains among the 
rest. It had not, and she had gone to what the 
Forsyths called their old ancestral five-dollar 
room, where that New York family continued to 
project a sort of wireless chaperonage over her. 
But the young man had come with a porter, and, 
with her own porter, Charlotte could not feel that 
even a wireless chaperonage was needed, though 
the young man approached with the most beam- 
ing face she thought she had ever seen, and 
said he hoped he should not be in her way. She 
answered with a sort of helpless reverberation 
of his glow, Not at all; she should only be a 
moment. She wanted to say she hoped she 
would not be in his way, but she saved herself 
in time, while, with her own eyes intent upon 
the fagade of her room and her mind trying to 
lose itself in the question which curtain -trunk 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

the scrims might be in, she kept the sense of his 
sweet eyes, the merriest eyes she had ever seen, 
effulgent with good-will and apology and rever- 
ent admiration. She blushed to think it admira- 
tion, though she liked to think it so, and she did 
not snub him when the young man jumped about, 
neglecting his own storage, and divining the right 
moments for his offers of help. She saw that he 
was a little shorter than herself, that he was very 
light and quick on his feet, and had a round, 
brown face, clean-shaven, and a round, brown 
head, close shorn, from which in the zeal of his 
attentions to her he had shed his straw hat onto 
the window-sill. He formed a strong contrast to 
the contents of his store-room, which was full, 
mainly, of massive white furniture picked out in 
gold, and very blond. He said casually that it had 
been there, off and on, since long before he could 
remember, and at these words an impression, 
vague, inexplicable, deepened in Charlotte's 
mind. 

11 Mother," she said, for she had now disused 
the earlier "mamma" in deference to modern 
usage, "how old was I when we first took that 
five-dollar room?" 

She asked this question after she had shown the 
scrim curtains she had found and brought home 
with her. 

21 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

"Why? I don't know. Two or three; three 
or four. I should have to count up. What makes 
you ask?" 

"Can a person recollect what happened when 
they were three or four?" 

"I should say not, decidedly." 

"Or recollect a face?" 

"Certainly not." 

"Then of course it wasn't. Mother, do you 
remember ever telling me what the little boy was 
like who gave me all his playthings and I couldn't 
decide what to give him back?" 

"What a question! Of course not! He was 
very brown and funny, with the beamingest little 
face in the world. Rather short for his age, I 
should say, though I haven't the least idea what 
his age was." 

"Then it was the very same little boy!" Char- 
lotte said. 

"Who was the very same little boy?" her 
mother demanded. 

"The one that was there to-day; the young 
man, I mean," Charlotte explained, and then she 
told what had happened with a want of fullness 
which her mother's imagination supplied. 

"Did he say who he was? Is he coming back 
to-morrow or this afternoon? Did you inquire 
who he was or where?" 

22 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

"What an idea, mother !" Charlotte said, group- 
ing the several impossibilities under one head in 
her answer. 

"You had a perfect right to know, if you thought 
he was the one." 

"But I didn't think he was the one, and I don't 
know that he is now; and if he was, what could 
I do about it?" 

"That is true," Mrs. Forsyth owned. "But 
it's very disappointing. I've always felt as if 
they ought to know it was your undecidedness 
and not ungenerousness." 

Charlotte laughed a little forlornly, but she 
only said, "Really, mother!" 

Mrs. Forsyth was still looking at the curtains. 
"Well, these are not the scrims I wanted. You 
must go back. I believe I will go with you. 
The sooner we have it over the better," she added, 
and she left the undecided Charlotte to decide 
whether she meant the scrim curtains or the young 
man's identity. 

It was very well, for one reason, that she de- 
cided to go with Charlotte that afternoon. The 
New-Yorkers must have completed the inspection 
of their trunks, for they had not come back. Their 
failure to do so was the more important because 
the young man had come back and was actively 
superintending the unpacking of his room. The 

23 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

palatial furniture had all been ranged up and 
down the corridor, and as fast as a trunk was got 
out and unlocked he went through it with the 
help of the storage-men, listed its contents in a 
note-book with a number, and then transferred 
the number and a synopsis of the record to a tag 
and fastened it to the trunk, which he had put 
back into the room. 

When the Forsyths arrived with the mistaken 
scrim curtains, he interrupted himself with apolo- 
gies for possibly being in their way; and when 
Mrs. Forsyth said he was not at all in their way, 
he got white-and-gold arm-chairs for her and 
Charlotte and put them so conveniently near the 
old ancestral room that Mrs. Forsyth scarcely 
needed to move hand or foot in letting Charlotte 
restore the wrong curtains and search the chests 
for the right ones. His politeness made way for 
conversation and for the almost instant exchange 
of confidences between himself and Mrs. Forsyth, 
so that Charlotte was free to enjoy the silence 
to which they left her in her labors. 

"Before I say a word," Mrs. Forsyth said, 
after saying some hundreds in their mutual in- 
culpation and exculpation, "I want to ask some- 
thing, and I hope you will excuse it to an old 
woman's curiosity and not think it rude." 

At the words "old woman's" the young man 
24 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

gave a protesting "Oh!" and at the word "rude" 
he said, "Not at all." 

"It is simply this: how long have your things 
been here? I ask because we've had this room 
thirteen or fourteen years, and I've never seen 
your room opened in that whole time." 

The young man laughed joyously. "Because 
it hasn't been opened in that whole time. I was 
a little chap of three or four bothering round here 
when my mother put the things in; I believe it 
was a great frolic for me, but I'm afraid it wasn't 
for her. I've been told that my activities con- 
tributed to the confusion of the things and the 
things in them that she's been in ever since, and 
I'm here now to make what reparation I can by 
listing them." 

"She'll find it a great blessing," Mrs. Forsyth 
said. "I wish we had ours listed. I suppose you 
remember it all very vividly. It must have been 
a great occasion for you seeing the things stored 
at that age." 

The young man beamed upon her. "Not so 
great as now, I'm afraid. The fact is, I don't 
remember anything about it. But I've been told 
that I embarrassed with my personal riches a 
little girl who was looking over her doll's things." 

"Oh, indeed!" Mrs. Forsyth said, stiffly, and 
she turned rather snubbingly from him and said, 

25 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

coldly, to Charlotte: "I think they are in that 
green trunk. Have you the key?" and, stooping 
as her daughter stooped, she whispered, "Really!" 
in condemnation and contempt. 

Charlotte showed no signs of sharing either, 
and Mrs. Forsyth could not very well manage 
them alone. So when Charlotte said, "No, I 
haven't the key, mother," and the young man 
burst in with, "Oh, do let me try my master- 
key; it will unlock anything that isn't a Yale," 
Mrs. Forsyth sank back enthroned and the 
trunk was thrown open. 

She then forgot what she had wanted it opened 
for. Charlotte said, "They're not here, mother," 
and her mother said, "No, I didn't suppose they 
were," and began to ask the young man about 
his mother. It appeared that his father had died 
twelve years before, and since then his mother 
and he had been nearly everywhere except at 
home, though mostly in England; now they had 
come home to see where they should go next or 
whether they should stay. 

"That would never suit my daughter," Mrs. 
Forsyth lugged in, partly because the talk had 
gone on away from her family as long as she 
could endure, and partly because Charlotte's in- 
decision always amused her. "She can't bear 
to choose." 

26 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

" Really ?" the young man said. "I don't 
know whether I like it or not, but I have had to 
do a lot of it. You mustn't think, though, that 
I chose this magnificent furniture. My father 
bought an Italian palace once, and as we couln't 
live in it or move it we brought the furniture 
here." 

"It is magnificent," Mrs. Forsyth said, look- 
ing down the long stretches of it and eying and 
fingering her specific throne. "I wish my hus- 
band could see it — I don't believe he remembers 
it from fourteen years ago. It looks — excuse me ! 
— very studio." 

" Is he a painter ? Not Mr. Forsyth the painter ?" 

"Yes," Mrs. Forsyth eagerly admitted, but 
wondering how he should know her name, with- 
out reflecting that a score of trunk-tags proclaimed 
it and that she had acquired his by like means. 

1 ' I like his things so much, ' ' he said. - ' I thought 
his three portraits were the best things in the 
Salon last year.-" 

"Oh, you saw them?" Mrs. Forsyth laughed 
with pleasure and pride. "Then," as if it neces- 
sarily followed, "you must come to us some 
Sunday afternoon. You'll find a number of his 
new portraits and some of the subjects; they 
like to see themselves framed." She tried for 
a card in her hand-bag, but she had none, and she 

27 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

said, "Have you one of my cards, my dear?" 
Charlotte had, and rendered it up with a severity 
lost upon her for the moment. She held it tow- 
ard him. "It's Mr. Peter Bream?" she smiled 
upon him, and he beamed back. 

"Did you remember it from our first meeting?" 

In their cab Mrs. Forsyth said, "I don't know 
whether he's what you call rather fresh or not, 
Charlotte, and I'm not sure that I've been very 
wise. But he is so nice, and he looked so glad to 
be asked." 

Charlotte did not reply at once, and her silent 
severity came to the surface of her mother's con- 
sciousness so painfully that it was rather a relief 
to have her explode, "Mother, I will thank you 
not to discuss my temperament with people." 

She gave Mrs. Forsyth her chance, and her 
mother was so happy in being able to say, "I 
won't — your temper y my dear," that she could add 
with sincere apology: "I'm sorry I vexed you, 
and I won't do it again." 

IV 

The next day was Sunday; Peter Bream took 
it for some Sunday, and came to the tea on Mrs. 
Forsyth's generalized invitation. She pulled her 
mouth down and her eyebrows up when his card 

28 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

was brought in, but as he followed hard she made 
a lightning change to a smile and gave him a hand 
of cordial welcome. Charlotte had no choice but 
to welcome him, too, and so the matter was simple 
for her. She was pouring, as usual, for her 
mother, who liked to eliminate herself from set 
duties and walk round among the actual portraits 
in fact and in frame and talk about them to the 
potential portraits. Peter, qualified by long so- 
journ in England, at once pressed himself into the 
service of handing about the curate's assistant; 
Mrs. Forsyth electrically explained that it was 
one of the first brought to New York, and that 
she had got it at the Stores in London fifteen years 
before, and it had often been in the old ancestral 
room, and was there on top of the trunks that 
first day. She did not recur to the famous in- 
stance of Charlotte's infant indecision, and Peter 
was safe from a snub when he sat down by the 
girl's side and began to make her laugh. At the 
end, when her mother asked Charlotte what they 
had been laughing about, she could not tell; she 
said she did not know they were laughing. 

The next morning Mrs. Forsyth was paying for 
her Sunday tea with a Monday headache, and 
more things must be got out for the country. 
Charlotte had again no choice but to go alone 
to the T storage, and yet again no choice but to be 

29 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

pleasant to Peter when she found him next door 
listing the contents of his mother's trunks and 
tagging them as before. He dropped his work 
and wanted to help her. Suddenly they seemed 
strangely well acquainted, and he pretended to 
be asked which pieces she should put aside as 
goods selected, and chose them for her. She hinted 
that he was shirking his own work; he said it 
was an all-summer's job, but he knew her mother 
was in a hurry. He found the little old trunk 
of her playthings, and got it down and opened it 
and took out some toys as goods selected. She 
made him put them back, but first he catalogued 
everything in it and synopsized the list on a tag 
and tagged the trunk. He begged for a broken doll 
which he had not listed, and Charlotte had so much 
of her original childish difficulty in parting with 
that instead of something else that she refused it. 
It came lunch-time, and he invited her to go 
out to lunch with him; and when she declined 
with dignity he argued that if they went to the 
Woman's Exchange she would be properly chap- 
eroned by the genius of the place; besides, it 
was the only place in town where you got real 
strawberry shortcake. She was ashamed of liking 
it all ; he besought her to let him carry her hand- 
bag for her, and, as he already had it, she could 
not prevent him; she did not know, really, how 

3° 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

far she might successfully forbid him in anything. 
At the street door of the apartment-house they 
found her mother getting out of a cab, and she 
asked Peter in to lunch ; so that Charlotte might 
as well have lunched with him at the Woman's 
Exchange. 

At all storage warehouses there is a season in 
autumn when the corridors are heaped with the 
incoming furniture of people who have decided 
that they cannot pass another winter in New 
York and are breaking up housekeeping to go 
abroad indefinitely. But in the spring, when the 
Constitutional Safe-Deposit offered ample space 
for thoughtful research, the meetings of Charlotte 
and Peter could recur without more conscious- 
ness of the advance they were making toward the 
fated issue than in so many encounters at tea 
or luncheon or dinner. Mrs. Forsyth was insist- 
ing on rather a drastic overhauling of her stor- 
age that year. Some of the things, by her com- 
mand, were shifted to and fro between the more 
modern rooms and the old ancestral room, and 
Charlotte had to verify the removals. In decid- 
ing upon goods selected for the country she had 
the help of Peter, and she helped him by inter- 
posing some useful hesitations in the case of things 
he had put aside from his mother's possessions to 
be sold for her by the warehouse people. 

31 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

One day he came late and told Charlotte that 
his mother had suddenly taken her passage for 
England, and they were sailing the next morning. 
He said, as if it logically followed, that he had 
been in love with her from that earliest time 
when she would not give him the least of her 
possessions, and now he asked her if she would 
not promise him the greatest. She did not like 
what she felt " rehearsed' ' in his proposal; it was 
not her idea of a proposal, which ought to be 
spontaneous and unpremeditated in terms; at 
the same time, she resented his precipitation, 
which she could not deny was inevitable. 

She perceived that they were sitting side by 
side on two of those white-and-gold thrones, and 
she summoned an indignation with the absurdity 
in refusing him. She rose and said that she must 
go; that she must be going; that it was quite 
time for her to go; and she would not let him 
follow her to the elevator, as he made some offer 
of doing, but left him standing among his palatial 
furniture like a prince in exile. 

By the time she reached home she had been 
able to decide that she must tell her mother at 
once. Her mother received the fact of Peter's 
proposal with such transport that she did not 
realize the fact of Charlotte's refusal. When this 
was connoted to her she could scarcely keep her 

32 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

temper within the bounds of maternal tenderness. 
She said she would have nothing more to do with 
such a girl; that there was but one such pearl as 
Peter in the universe, and for Charlotte to throw 
him away like that! Was it because she could 
not decide? Well, it appeared that she could 
decide wrong quickly enough when it came to the 
point. Would she leave it now to her mother? 

That Charlotte would not do, but what she did 
do was to write a letter to Peter taking him back 
as much as rested with her; but delaying so long 
in posting it, when it was written, that it reached 
him among the letters sent on board and sup- 
plementarily delivered by his room steward after 
all the others when the ship had sailed. The best 
Peter could do in response was a jubilant Mar- 
conigram of unequaled cost and comprehensiveness. 

His mother had meant to return in the fall, 
after her custom, to find out whether she wished 
to spend the winter in New York or not. Before 
the date for her sailing she fell sick, and Peter 
came sadly home alone in the spring. Mrs. Bream's 
death brought Mrs. Forsyth a vain regret; she 
was sorry now that she had seen so little of 
Mrs. Bream; Peter's affection for her was beau- 
tiful and spoke worlds for both of them; and they, 
the Forsyths, must do what they could to com- 
fort him. 

3 33 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

Charlotte felt the pathos of his case peculiarly 
when she went to make provision for goods se- 
lected for the summer from the old ancestral 
room, and found him forlorn among his white- 
and-gold furniture next door. He complained 
that he had no association with it except the touch- 
ing fact of his mother's helplessness with it, which 
he had now inherited. The contents of the 
trunks were even less intimately of his experience; 
he had performed a filial duty in listing their 
contents, which long antedated him, and con- 
sisted mostly of palatial bric-a-brac and the varied 
spoils of travel. 

He cheered up, however, in proposing to her 
that they should buy a Castle in Spain and put 
them into it. The fancy pleased her, but visibly 
she shrank from a step which it involved, so that 
he was, as it were, forced to say, half jokingly, 
half ruefully, "I can imagine your not caring for 
this rubbish or what became of it, Charlotte, but 
what about the owner ?' ■ 

"The owner ?" she asked, as it were somnam- 
bulantly. 

"Yes. Marrying him, say, sometime soon." 

"Oh, Peter, I couldn't." " 

"Couldn't? You know that's not playing the 
game exactly." 

"Yes; but not — not right away?" 
34 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

"Well, I don't know much about it in my own 
case, but isn't it usual to fix some approximate 
date? When should you think?" 

"Oh, Peter, I can't think." 

"Will you let me fix it? I must go West and 
sell out and pull up, you know, preparatory to 
never going again. We can fix the day now or 
we can fix it when I come back." 

"Oh, when you come back," she entreated so 
eagerly that Peter said: 

"Charlotte, let me ask you one thing. Were 
you ever sorry you wrote me that taking-back 
letter?" 

"Why, Peter, you know how I am. When I 
have decided something I have undecided it. 
That's all." 

From gay he turned to grave. "I ought to 
have thought. I haven't been fair; I haven't 
played the game. I ought to have given you 
another chance; and I haven't, have I?" 

"Why, I suppose a girl can always change," 
Charlotte said, suggestively. 

"Yes, but you won't always be a girl. I've 
never asked you if you wanted to change. I ask 
you now. Do you?" 

"How can I tell? Hadn't we better let it go 
as it is? Only not hurry about — about — marry- 
ing?" 

35 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

"Certainly not hurry about marrying. I've 
wondered that a girl could make up her mind to 
marry any given man. Haven't you ever wished 
that you had not made up your mind about me?" 

"Hundreds of times. But I don't know that 
I meant anything by it." 

He took her hand from where it lay in her lap 
as again she sat on one of the white-and-gold 
thrones beside him and gently pressed it. "Well, 
then, let's play we have never been engaged. I'm 
going West to-night to settle things up for good, 
and I won't be back for three or four months, 
and when I come back we'll start new. I'll ask 
you, and you shall say yes or no just as if you 
had never said either before." 

"Peter, when you talk like that!" She saw his 
brown, round face dimly through her wet eyes, 
and she wanted to hug him for pity of him and 
pride in him, but she could not decide to do it. 
They went out to lunch at the Woman's Exchange, 
and the only regret Peter had was that it was so 
long past the season of strawberry shortcake, and 
that Charlotte seemed neither to talk nor to 
listen; she ought to have done one or the other. 

They had left the Vaneckens busy with their 
summer trunks at the far end of the northward 
corridor, where their wireless station had been 
re-established for Charlotte's advantage, though 

36 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

she had not thought of it the whole short morn- 
ing long. When she came back from lunch the 
Vaneckens were just brushing away the crumbs 
of theirs, which the son and brother seemed to 
have brought in for them in a paper box; at 
any rate, he was now there, making believe to 
help them. 

Mrs. Forsyth had promised to come, but she 
came so late in the afternoon that she owned she 
had been grudgingly admitted at the office, and 
she was rather indignant about it. By this time, 
without having been West for three months, Peter 
had asked a question which had apparently never 
been asked before, and Charlotte had as newly 
answered it. "And now, mother," she said, 
while Mrs. Forsyth passed from indignant to 
exultant, "I want to be married right away, be- 
fore Peter changes his mind about taking me West 
with him. Let us go home at once. You always 
said I should have a home wedding." 

"What a ridiculous idea!" Mrs. Forsyth said, 
more to gain time than anything else. She added, 
"Everything is at sixes and sevens in the flat. 
There wouldn't be standing-room." A sudden 
thought flashed upon her, which, because it was 
sudden and in keeping with her character, she 
put into tentative words. "You're more at home 
here than anywhere else. You were almost born 

37 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

here. You've played about here ever since you 
were a child. You first met Peter here. He pro- 
posed to you here, and you rejected him here. 
He's proposed here again, and you've accepted 
him, you say — " 

"Mother!" Charlotte broke in terribly upon 
her. "Are you suggesting that I should be mar- 
ried in a storage warehouse? Well, I haven't 
fallen quite so low as that yet. If I can't have a 
home wedding, I will have a church wedding, and 
I will wait till doomsday for it if necessary." 

"I don't know about doomsday," Mrs. For- 
syth said, "but as far as to-day is concerned, 
it's too late for a church wedding. Peter, isn't 
there something about canonical hours? And 
isn't it past them?" 

"That's in the Episcopal Church," Peter said, 
and then he asked, very politely, "Will you ex- 
cuse me for a moment?" and walked away as if 
he had an idea. It was apparently to join the 
Vaneckens, who stood in a group at the end of 
their corridor, watching the restoration of the 
trunks which they had been working over the 
whole day. He came back with Mr. Vanecken 
and Mr. Vanecken's mother. He was smiling 
radiantly, and they amusedly. 

" It 's all right, ' ' he explained. ' ' Mr. Vanecken is 
a Presbyterian minister, and he will marry us now." 

38 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

"But not here!" Charlotte cried, feeling herself 
weaken. 

"No, certainly not," the dominie reassured her. 
"I know a church in the next block that I can bor- 
row for the occasion. But what about the license ?" 

It was in the day before the parties must £>oth 
make application in person, and Peter took a 
paper from his breast pocket. "I thought it 
might be needed, sometime, and I got it on the 
way up, this morning/ ' 

"Oh, how thoughtful of you, Peter!" Mrs. 
Forsyth moaned in admiration otherwise inex- 
pressible, and the rest laughed, even Charlotte, 
who laughed hysterically. At the end of the cor- 
ridor they met the Misses Vanecken waiting for 
them, unobtrusively expectant, and they all went 
down in the elevator together. Just as they were 
leaving the building, which had the air of hurry- 
ing them out, Mrs. Forsyth had an inspiration. 
"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, and then, in 
deference to Mr. Vanecken, said, "Good gracious, 
I mean. My husband! Peter, go right into the 
office and telephone Mr. Forsyth." 

"Perhaps," Mr. Vanecken said, "I had better 
go and see about having my friend's church 
opened, in the meanwhile, and — " 

"By all means!" Mrs. Forsyth said from her 
mood of universal approbation. 

39 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

But Mr. Vanecken came back looking rather 
queer and crestfallen. "I find my friend has 
gone into the country for a few days; and I 
don't quite like to get the sexton to open the 
church without 8 his authority, and — But New 
York is full of churches, and we can easily find 
another, with a little delay, if — " 

He looked at Peter, who looked at Charlotte, 
who burst out with unprecedented determination. 
"No, we can't wait. I shall never marry Peter 
if we do. Mother, you are right. But must it 
be in the old ancestral five-dollar room?" 

They all laughed except Charlotte, who was 
more like crying. 

"Certainly not," Mr. Vanecken said. "I've 
no doubt the manager — " 

He never seemed to end his sentences, and he 
now left this one broken off while he penetrated 
the railing which fenced in the manager alone 
among a group of vacated desks, frowning im- 
patient. At some murmured words from the 
dominie, he shouted, "What!" and then came out 
radiantly smiling, and saying, "Why, certainly." 
He knew all the group as old storers in the Con- 
stitutional, and called them each by name as he 
shook them each by the hand. "Everything else 
has happened here, and I don't see why this 
shouldn't. Come right into the reception-room." 

40 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

With some paintings of biblical subjects, un- 
claimed from the storage, on the walls, the place 
had a religious effect, and the manager signifi- 
cantly looked out of it a lingering stenographer, 
who was standing before a glass with two hat- 
pins crossed in her mouth preparatory to thrust- 
ing them through the straw. She withdrew, 
visibly curious and reluctant, and then the man- 
ager offered to withdraw himself. 

"No," Charlotte said, surprisingly initiative in 
these junctures, "I don't know how it is in Mr. 
Vanecken's church, but, if father doesn't come, 
perhaps you'll have to give me away. At any 
rate, you're an old friend of the family, and I 
should be hurt if you didn't stay." 

She laid her hand on the manager's arm, and 
just as he had protestingly and politely consented, 
her father arrived in a taxicab, rather grumbling 
from having been obliged to cut short a sitting. 
When it was all over, and the Vaneckens were 
eliminated, when, in fact, the Breams had joined 
the Forsyths at a wedding dinner which the bride's 
father had given them at Delmonico's and had 
precipitated themselves into a train for Niagara 
("So banal," Mrs. Forsyth said, "but I suppose 
they had to go somewhere, and we went to Niagara, 
come to think of it, and it's on their way West"), 
the bride's mother remained up late talking it 

4i 



THE DAUGHTER OF THE STORAGE 

all over. She took credit to herself for the whole 
affair, and gave herself a great deal of just praise. 
But when she said, "I do believe, if it hadn't been 
for me, at the last, Charlotte would never have 
made up her mind," Forsyth demurred. 

"I should say Peter had a good deal to do with 
making up her mind for her." 

"Yes, you might say that." 

"And for once in her life Charlotte seems to 
have had her mind ready for making up." 

"Yes, you might say that, too. I believe she 
is going to turn out a decided character, after all. 
I never saw anybody so determined not to be mar- 
ried in a storage warehouse." 



A PRESENTIMENT 



II 

A PRESENTIMENT 

/""WER our coffee in the Turkish room Minver 
^-^ was usually a censor of our several foibles 
rather than a sharer in our philosophic specula- 
tions and metaphysical conjectures. He liked to 
disable me as one professionally vowed to the 
fabulous, and he had unfailing fun with the ro- 
mantic sentimentality of Rulledge, which was in 
fact so little in keeping with the gross super- 
abundance of his person, his habitual gluttony, 
and his ridiculous indolence. Minver knew very 
well that Rulledge was a good fellow withal, and 
would willingly do any kind action that did not 
seriously interfere with his comfort, or make too 
heavy a draft upon his pocket. His self-indul- 
gence, which was quite blameless, unless surfeit 
is a fault, was the basis of an interest in occult 
themes, which was the means of even higher di- 
version to Minver. He liked to have Rulledge 
approach Wanhope from this side, in the invin- 

45 



A PRESENTIMENT 

cible persuasion that the psychologist would be 
interestedm these themes by the law of his science, 
though he had been assured again and again that 
in spite of its misleading name psychology did 
not deal with the soul as Rulledge supposed the 
soul; and Minver's eyes lighted up with a pre- 
science of uncommon pleasure when, late one night, 
after we had vainly tried to hit it off in talk, now 
of this, now of that, Rulledge asked Wanhope, 
abruptly as if it followed from something be- 
fore: 

"Wasn't there a great deal more said about 
presentiments forty or fifty years ago than there 
is now?" 

Wanhope had been lapsing deeper and deeper 
into the hollow of his chair; but he now pulled 
himself up, and turned quickly toward Rulledge. 
"What made you think of that?" he asked. 

"I don't know. Why?" 

"Because I was thinking of it myself." He 
glanced at me, and I shook my head. 

"Well," Minver said, "if it will leave Acton 
out in the cold, I'll own that I was thinking of it, 
too. I was going back in my mind, for no reason 
that I know of, to my childhood, when I first 
heard of such a thing as a presentiment, and when 
I was afraid of having one. I had the notion that 
presentiments ran in the family." 

46 



A PRESENTIMENT 

"Why had you that notion ?" Rulledge de- 
manded. 

"I don't know that I proposed telling,' ' the 
painter said, giving himself to his pipe. 

"Perhaps you didn't have it," Rulledge re- 
taliated. 

"Perhaps," Minver assented. 

Wanhope turned from the personal aspect of 
the matter. "It's rather curious that we should 
all three have had the same thing in mind just 
now; or, rather, it is not very curious. Such 
coincidences are really very common. Something 
must have been said at dinner which suggested 
it to all of us." 

"All but Acton," Minver demurred. 

"I mightn't have heard what was said," I ex- 
plained. "I suppose the passing of all that sort 
of sub-beliefs must date from the general lapse 
of faith in personal immortality." 

"Yes, no doubt," Wanhope assented. "It is 
very striking how sudden the lapse was. Every 
one who experienced it in himself could date it 
to a year, if not to a day. The agnosticism of 
scientific men was of course all the time under- 
mining the fabric of faith, and then it fell in 
abruptly, reaching one believer after another as 
fast as the ground was taken wholly or partly 
from under his feet. I can remember how people 

47 



A PRESENTIMENT 

once disputed whether there were such beings 
as guardian spirits or not. That minor question 
was disposed of when it was decided that there 
were no spirits at all." 

"Naturally," Minver said. "And the decay of 
the presentiment must have been hastened by the 
failure of so many presentiments to make good." 

"The great majority of them have failed to 
make good, from the beginning of time," Wan- 
hope replied. 

"There are two kinds of presentiments," Rul- 
ledge suggested, with a philosophic air. "The 
true and the untrue." 

"Like mushrooms," Minver said. "Only, the 
true presentiment kills, and the true mushroom 
nourishes. Talking of mushrooms, they have a 
way in Switzerland of preserving them in walnut 
oil, and they fill you with the darkest forebodings, 
after you've filled yourself with the mushrooms. 
There's some occult relation between the two. 
Think it out, Rulledge!" 

Rulledge ignored him in turning to Wanhope. 
"The trouble is how to distinguish the true from 
the untrue presentiment." 

"It would be interesting," Wanhope began, but 
Minver broke in upon him maliciously. 

"To know how much the dyspepsia of our 
predecessors had to with the prevalence of pre- 

48 



A PRESENTIMENT 

sentimentalism? I agree with you, that a better 
diet has a good deal to do with the decline of the 
dark foreboding among us. What I can't under- 
stand is, how a gross and reckless feeder, like 
Rulledge here, doesn't go about like ancestral 
voices prophesying all sorts of dreadful things." 

"That's rather cheap talk, even for you, Min- 
ver," Rulledge said. "Why did you think pre- 
sentiments ran in your family?" 

"Well, there you have me, Rulledge. That's 
where my theory fails. I can remember," Min- 
ver continued soberly, "the talk there used to 
be about them among my people. They were 
serious people in an unreligious way, or rather 
an unecclesiastical way. They were never spirit- 
ualists, but I don't think there was one of them 
who doubted that he should live hereafter; he 
might doubt that he was living here, but there was 
no question of the other thing. I must say it 
gave a dignity to their conversation which, when 
they met, as they were apt to do at one another's 
houses on Sunday nights, was not of common 
things. One of my uncles was a merchant, an- 
other a doctor; my father was a portrait-painter 
by profession, and a sign-painter by practice. I 
suppose that's where I got my knack, such as it 
is. The merchant was an invalid, rather, though 
he kept about his business, and our people merely 
4 49 



A PRESENTIMENT 

recognized him as being out of health. He was 
what we could call, for that day and region — the 
Middle West of the early fifties — a man of un- 
usual refinement. I suppose this was tempera- 
mental with him largely; but he had cultivated 
tastes, too. I remember him as a peculiarly gentle 
person, with a pensive cast of face, and the melan- 
choly accomplishment of playing the flute." 

"I wonder why nobody plays the flute nowa- 
days," I mused aloud. 

■* ' Yes, it's quite obsolete, ' ' Minver said. ' 6 They 
only play the flute in the orchestras now. I al- 
ways look at the man who plays it and think of 
my uncle. He used to be very nice to me as a 
child; and he was very fond of my father, in a 
sort of filial way; my father was so much older. 
I can remember my young aunt ; and how pretty 
she was as she sat at the piano, and sang and 
played to his fluting. When she looked forward 
at the music, her curls fell into her neck; they 
wore curls then, grown-up women; and though 
I don't think curls are beautiful, my aunt's beauty 
would have been less without them; in fact, I 
can't think of her without them. 

"She was delicate, too; they were really a pair 
of invalids; but she had none of his melancholy. 
They had had several children, who died, one 
after another, and there was only one left at the 

50 



A PRESENTIMENT 

time I am speaking of. I rather wonder, now, 
that the thought of those poor little ghost-cousins 
didn't make me uncomfortable. I was a very- 
superstitious boy, but I seem not to have thought 
of them. I played with the little girl who was 
left, and I liked going to my uncle's better than 
anywhere else. I preferred going in the daytime 
and in the summer-time. Then my cousin and I 
sat in a nook of the garden and fought violets, as 
we called it ; hooked the wry necks of the flowers 
together and twitched to see which blossom would 
come off first. She was a sunny little thing, like 
her mother, and she had curls, like her. I can't 
express the feeling I had for my aunt ; she seemed 
the embodiment of a world that was at once very 
proud and very good. I suppose she dressed 
fashionably, as things went then and there; and 
her style as well as her beauty fascinated me. I 
would have done anything to please her, far 
more than to please my cousin. With her I used 
to squabble, and sometimes sent her crying to 
her mother. Then I always ran off home, but 
when I sneaked back, or was sent for to come 
and play with my cousin, I was not scolded for 
my wickedness. 

"My uncle was more prosperous than his 
brothers; he lived in a much better house than 
ours, and I used to be quite awe-struck by its 

5i 



A PRESENTIMENT 

magnificence. He went East, as we said, twice 
a year to buy goods, and he had things sent back 
for his house such as we never saw elsewhere; 
those cask-shaped seats of blue china for the 
verandas, and bamboo chairs. There were cane- 
bottom chairs in the sitting-room, such as we had 
in our best room; in the parlor the large pieces 
were of mahogany veneer, upholstered in black 
hair-cloth; they held me in awe. The piano filled 
half the place; the windows came down to the 
ground, and had Venetian blinds and lace cur- 
tains. 

"We all went in there after the Sunday night 
supper, and then the fathers and mothers were 
apt to begin talking of those occult things that 
gave me the creeps. It was after the Rochester 
Knockings, as they were called, had been exposed, 
and so had spread like an infection everywhere. 
It was as if people were waiting to have the fraud 
shown up in order to believe in it." 

"That sort of thing happens," Wanhope agreed. 
"It's as if the seeds of the ventilated imposture 
were carried atmospherically into the human 
mind broadcast and a universal crop of self- 
delusion sprang up." 

"At any rate," Minver resumed, "instead of 
the gift being confined to a few persons — a small 
sisterhood with detonating knee-joints — there were 

52 



A PRESENTIMENT 

rappings in every well-regulated household ; all the 
tables tipped; people went to sleep to the soft 
patter of raps on the headboards of their beds; 
and girls who could not spell were occupied in 
delivering messages from Socrates, Ben Franklin 
and Shakespeare. Besides the physical demon- 
strations, there were all sorts of psychical in- 
timations from the world which we've now 
abolished." 

"Not permanently, perhaps," I suggested. 

"Well, that remains to be seen," Minver said. 
"It was this sort of thing which my people valued 
above the other. Perhaps they were exclusive in 
their tastes, and did not care for an occultism 
which the crowd could share with them; though 
this is a conjecture too long after the fact to have 
much value. As far as I can now remember, they 
used to talk of the double presence of living per- 
sons, like their being where they greatly wished 
to be as well as where they really were; of clair- 
voyance; of what we call mind-transference, now; 
of weird coincidences of all kinds; of strange ex- 
periences of their own and of others; of the par- 
ticipation of animals in these experiences, like the 
testimony of cats and dogs to the presence of 
invisible spirits; of dreams that came true, or 
came near coming true; and, above everything, 
of forebodings and presentiments. 

S3 



A PRESENTIMENT 

"I dare say they didn't always talk of such 
things, and I'm giving possibly a general impres- 
sion from a single instance; everything remem- 
bered of childhood is as if from large and repeated 
occurrence. But it must have happened more 
than once, for I recall that when it came to pre- 
sentiments my aunt broke it up, perhaps once 
only. My cousin used to get very sleepy on the 
rug before the fire, and her mother would carry 
her off to bed, very cross and impatient of being 
kissed good night, while I was left to the brunt of 
the occult alone. I could not go with my aunt 
and cousin, and I folded myself in my mother's 
skirt, where I sat at her feet, and listened in an 
anguish of drowsy terror. The talk would pass 
into my dreams, and the dreams would return 
into the talk; and I would suffer a sort of double 
nightmare, waking and sleeping." 

' ' Poor little devil!" Rulledge broke out. "It's 
astonishing how people will go on before children, 
and never think of the misery they're making for 
them." 

"I believe my mother thought of it," Minver 
returned, "but when that sort of talk began, the 
witchery of it was probably too strong for her. 
'It held her like a two years' child'; I was eight 
that winter. I don't know how long my suffer- 
ing had gone on, when my aunt came back and 

54 



A PRESENTIMENT 

seemed to break up the talk. It had got to pre- 
sentiments, and, whether they knew that this was 
forbidden ground with her, or whether she now 
actually said something about it, they turned to 
talk of other things. I'm not telling you all this 
from my own memory, which deals with only a 
point or two. My father and mother used to 
recur to it when I was older, and I am piecing 
out my story from their memories. 

"My uncle, with all his temperamental pensive- 
ness, was my aunt's stay and cheer in the fits of 
depression which she paid with for her usual 
gaiety. But these fits always began with some 
uncommon depression of his— some effect of the 
forebodings he was subject to. Her opposition 
to that kind of thing was purely unselfish, but 
certainly she dreaded it for him as well as herself. 
I suppose there was a sort of conscious silence in 
the others which betrayed them to her. 'Well/ 
she said, laughing, 'have you been at: it again? 
That poor child looks frightened out of his wits.' 

"They all laughed then, and my father said, 
hypocritically, 'I was just going, to ask Felix 
whether he expected to start East this week 
or next.' 

"My uncle tried to make light of what was 
always a heavy matter with him. 'Well, yester- 
day,' he answered, 'I should have said next week; 

55 



A PRESENTIMENT 

but it's this week, now. I'm going on Wednes- 
day.' 

"'By stage or packet?' my father asked. 

'"Oh, I shall take the canal to the lake, and 
get the boat for Buffalo there,' my uncle said. 

"They went on to speak of the trip to New 
York, and how much easier it was then than it 
used to be when you had to go by stage over the 
mountains to Philadelphia and on by stage again. 
Now, it seemed, you got the Erie Canal packet 
at Buffalo and the Hudson River steamboat at 
Albany, and reached New York in four or five 
days, in great comfort without the least fatigue. 
They had all risen and my aunt had gone out 
with her sisters-in-law to help them get their 
wraps. When they returned, it seemed that they 
had been talking of the journey, too, for she said 
to my mother, laughing again, 'Well, Richard 
may think it's easy; but somehow Felix never 
expects to get home alive.' 

"I don't think I ever heard my uncle laugh, 
but I can remember how he smiled at my aunt's 
laughing, as he put his hand on her shoulder; I 
thought it was somehow a very sad smile. On 
Wednesday I was allowed to go with my aunt and 
cousin to see him off on the packet, which came 
up from Cincinnati early in the morning; I had 
lain awake most of the night, and then nearly 

56 



A PRESENTIMENT 

overslept myself, and then was at the canal in 
time. We made a gay parting for him, but when 
the boat started, and I was gloating on the three 
horses making up the tow-path at a spanking trot, 
under the snaky spirals of the driver's smacking 
whip-lash, I caught sight of my uncle standing on 
the deck and smiling that sad smile of his. My 
aunt was waving her handkerchief, but when she 
turned away she put it to her eyes. 

"The rest of the story, such as it is, I know, 
almost to the very end, from what I heard my 
father and mother say from my uncle's report after- 
ward. He told them that, when the boat started, 
the stress to stay was so strong upon him that 
if he had not been ashamed he would have jumped 
ashore and followed us home. He said that he 
could not analyze his feelings; it was not yet any 
definite foreboding, but simply a depression that 
seemed to crush him so that all his movements 
were leaden, when he turned at last, and went 
down to breakfast in the cabin below. The stress 
did not lighten with the little changes and chances 
of the voyage to the lake. He was never much 
given to making acquaintance with people, but 
now he found himself so absent-minded that he 
was aware of being sometimes spoken to by 
friendly strangers without replying until it was 
too late even to apologize. He was not only 

57 



A PRESENTIMENT 

steeped in this gloom, but he had the constant dis- 
tress of the effort he involuntarily made to trace 
it back to some cause or follow it forward to some 
consequence. He kept trying at this, with a mind 
so tensely bent to the mere horror that he could 
not for a moment strain away from it. He would 
very willingly have occupied himself with other 
things, but the anguish which the double action 
of his mind gave him was such that he could not 
bear the effort; all he could do was to abandon 
himself to his obsession. This would ease him 
only for a while, though, and then he would suffer 
the misery of trying in vain to escape from it. 
1 'He thought he must be going mad, but in- 
sanity implied some definite delusion or hallucina- 
tion, and,' so fair as he could make out, he had none. 
He was simply crushed by a nameless foreboding. 
Something dreadful was to happen, but this was 
all he felt ; knowledge had no part in his condition. 
tie could not say whether he slept during the two 
nights that passed before he reached Toledo, 
where he was to take the lake steamer for Buffalo. 
He wished to turn back again, but the relentless 
pressure which had kept him from turning back 
at the start was as strong as ever with him. He 
tried to give his presentiment direction by talking 
with the other passengers about a recent accident 
to a lake steamer, in which several hundred lives 

58 



A PRESENTIMENT 

were lost; there had been a collision in rough 
weather, and one of the boats had gone down in 
a few minutes. There was a sort of relief in that, 
but the double action of the mind brought the 
same intolerable anguish again, and he settled 
back for refuge under the shadow of his im- 
penetrable doom. This did not lift till he was 
well on his way from Albany to New York by 
the Hudson River. The canal-boat voyage from 
Buffalo to Albany had been as eventless as that 
to Toledo, and his lake steamer had reached 
Buffalo in safety, for which it had seemed as if 
those lost in the recent disaster had paid. 

"He tried to pierce his heavy cloud by argu- 
ment from the security in which he had traveled 
so far, but the very security had its hopelessness. 
If something had happened — some slight accident 
— to interrupt it, his reason, or his unreason, 
might have taken it for a sign that the obscure 
doom, whatever it was, had been averted. 

"Up to this time he had not been able to con- 
nect his foreboding with anything definite, and 
he was not afraid for himself. He was simply 
without the formless hope that helps us on at 
every step, through good and bad, and it was a 
mortal peril, which he came through safely while 
scores of others were lost, that gave his presenti- 
ment direction. He had taken the day boat from 

59 



A PRESENTIMENT 

Albany, and about the middle of the afternoon the 
boat, making way under a head-wind, took fire. 
The pilot immediately ran her ashore, and her 
passengers, those that had the courage for it, 
ran aft, and began jumping from the stern, but 
a great many women and children were burned. 
My uncle was one of the first of those who jumped, 
and he stood in the water, trying to save those 
who came after from drowning; it was not very 
deep. Some of the women lost courage for the 
leap, and some turned back into the flames, re- 
membering children they had left behind. One 
poor creature stood hesitating wildly, and he 
called up to her to Jump. At last she did so, al- 
most into his arms, and then she clung about 
him as he helped her ashore. 'Oh,' she cried out 
between her sobs, 'if you have a wife and children 
at home, God will take you safe back to them; 
you have saved my life for my husband and little 
ones.' 'No,' he was conscious of saying, 'I shall 
never see my wife again,' and now his foreboding 
had the direction that it had wanted before. 

"From that on he simply knew that he should 
not get home alive, and he waited resignedly for 
the time and form of his disaster. He had a sort 
of peace in that. He went about his business in- 
telligently, and from habit carefully, but it was 
with a mechanical action of the mind, something, 

60 



A PRESENTIMENT 

he imagined, like the mechanical action of his 
body in those organs which do their part without 
bidding from the will. He was only a few days 
in New York, but in the course of them he got 
several letters from his wife telling him that all 
was going well with her and their daughter. It 
was before the times when you can ask and answer 
questions by telegraph, and he started back, 
necessarily without having heard the latest news 
from home. 

"He made the return trip in a sort of daze, 
talking,, reading, eating, and sleeping in the calm 
certainty of doom, and only wondering how it 
would be fulfilled, and what hour of the night 
or day. But it is no use my eking this out; I 
heard it, as I say, when I was a child, and I am 
afraid that if I should try to give it with the full 
detail I should take to inventing particulars/ ' 
Minver paused a moment, and then he said: "But 
there was one thing that impressed itself indelibly 
on my memory. My uncle got back perfectly 
safe and well." 

"Oh!" Rulledge snorted in rude dissatisfaction. 

"What was it impressed itself on your mem- 
ory?" Wanhope asked, with scientific detachment 
from the story as a story. 

Minver continued to address Wanhope, without 
regarding Rulledge. "My uncle told my father 

61 



A PRESENTIMENT 

that some sort of psychical change, which he could 
not describe, but which he was as conscious of as 
if it were physical, took place within him as he 
came in sight of his house-— -" 

"Yes," Wanhope prompted. 

"He had driven down from the canal-packet in 
the old omnibus which used to meet passengers 
and distribute them at their destinations in town. 
All the way to his house he was still under the 
doom as regarded himself, but bewildered that he 
should be getting home safe and well, and he was 
refusing his escape, as it were, and then suddenly, 
at the sight of the familiar house, the change within 
him happened. He looked out of the omnibus 
window and saw a group of neighbors at his 
gate. As he got out of the omnibus, my father 
took him by the hand, as if to hold him back a 
moment. Then he said to my father, very quietly, 
'You needn't tell me: my wife is dead.' " 

There was an appreciable pause, in which we 
were all silent, and then Rulledge demanded, 
greedily, "And was she?" 

"Really, Rulledge !" I could not help protesting. 

Minver asked him, almost compassionately and 
with unwonted gentleness, as from the mood in 
which his reminiscence had left him: "You sus- 
pected a hoax? She had died suddenly the 
night before while she and my cousin were getting 

62 



A PRESENTIMENT 

things ready to welcome my uncle home in the 
morning. I'm sorry you're disappointed,' ' he 
added, getting back to his irony. 

" Whatever," Rulledge pursued, "became of the 
little girl?" 

"She died rather young; a great many years 
ago; and my uncle soon after her." 

Rulledge went away without saying anything, 
but presently returned with the sandwich which he 
had apparently gone for, while Wanhope was re- 
marking: "That want of definition in the presenti- 
ment at first, and then its determination in the new 
direction by, as it were, propinquity — it is all very 
curious. Possibly we shall some day discover a 
law in such matters." 

Rulledge said: "How was it your boyhood was 
passed in the Middle West, Minver? I always 
thought you were a Bostonian." 

"I was an adoptive Bostonian for a good while, 
until I decided to become a native New-Yorker, 
so that I could always be near to you, Rulledge. 
You can never know what a delicate satisfaction 
you are." 

Minver laughed, and we were severally restored 
to the wonted relations which his story had in- 
terrupted. 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S 
LAST TRIP 



Ill 

CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

TT was against the law, in such case made and 

* provided, 

Of the United States, but by the good will of 
the pilots 

That we would some of us climb to the pilot- 
house after our breakfast 

For a morning smoke, and find ourselves seats 
on the benching 

Under the windows, or in the worn-smooth arm- 
chairs. The pilot, 

Which one it was did not matter, would tilt his 
head round and say, "All right I" 

When he had seen who we were, and begin, or 
go on as from stopping 

In the midst of talk that was leading up to a 
story, 

Just before we came in, and the story, begun or 
beginning, 

Always began or ended with some one, or some- 
thing or other, 

67 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

Having to do with the river. If one left the 

wheel to the other, 
Going off watch, he would say to his partner 

standing behind him 
With his hands stretched out for the spokes that 

were not given up yet, 
" Captain, you can tell them the thing I was 

going to tell them 
Better than I could, I reckon," and then the 

other would answer, 
4 'Well, I don't know as I feel so sure of that, 

captain," and having 
Recognized each other so by that courtesy title 

of captain 
Never officially failed of without offense among 

pilots, 
One would subside into Jim and into Jerry the other. 

It was on these terms, at least, Captain Dunn 
relieved Captain Davis 

When we had settled ourselves one day to listen 
in comfort, 

After some psychological subtleties we had in- 
dulged in at breakfast 

Touching that weird experience every one knows 
when the senses 

Juggle the points of the compass out of true 
orientation, 

68 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

Changing the North to the South, and the East 
to the West. "Why, Jerry, what was it 

You was going to tell them?" "Oh, never you 
mind what it was, Jim. 

You tell them something else," and so Captain 
Davis submitted, 

While Captain Dunn, with a laugh, got away 
beyond reach of his protest. 

Then Captain Davis, with fitting, deprecatory 
preamble, 

Launched himself on a story that promised to be 
all a story 

Could be expected to be, when one of those 
women — you know them — 

Who interrupt on any occasion or none, inter- 
rupted, 

Pointed her hand, and asked, "Oh, what is that 
island there, captain ?" 

"That one, ma'am?" He gave her the name, 
and then the woman persisted, 

"Don't say you know them all by sight!" "Yes, 
by sight or by feeling.' ' 

"What do you mean by feeling?" "Why, just 
that by daylight we see them, 

And in the dark it's like as if somehow we felt 
them, I reckon. 

Every foot of the channel and change in it, wash- 
out and cave-in, 

69 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

Every bend and turn of it, every sand-bar and 

landmark, 
Every island, of course, we have got to see them, 

or feel them." 
"But if you don't?" "But we've got to." "But 

aren't you ever mistaken?" 
"Never the second time." "Now, what do you 

mean, Captain Davis? 
Never the second time." "Well, let me tell you 

a story. 
It's not the one I begun, but that island you 

asked about yonder 
Puts me in mind of it, happens to be the place 

where it happened, 
Three years ago. I suppose no man ever knew 

the Ohio 
Better than Captain Dunlevy, if any one else 

knew it like him. 
Man and boy he had been pretty much his whole 

life on the river: 
Cabin-boy first on a keelboat before the day of 

the steamboats, 
Back in the pioneer times; and watchman then 

on a steamboat; 
Then second mate, and then mate, and then pilot 

and captain and owner — 
But he was proudest, I reckon, of being about 

the best pilot 

70 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

On the Ohio. He knew it as well as he knew his 

own Bible, 
And I don't hardly believe that ever Captain 

Dunlevy 
Let a single day go by without reading a chapter/ ' 



While the pilot went on with his talk, and in 
regular, rhythmical motion 

Swayed from one side to the other before his 
wheel, and we listened, 

Certain typical facts of the picturesque life of 
the river 

Won their way to our consciousness as without 
help of our senses. 

It was along about the beginning of March, but 
already 

In the sleepy sunshine the budding maples and 
willows, 

Where they waded out in the shallow wash of 
the freshet, 

Showed the dull red and the yellow green of their 
blossoms and catkins, 

And in their tops the foremost flocks of black- 
birds debated 

As to which they should colonize first. The in- 
dolent house-boats 

Loafing along the shore, sent up in silvery spirals 

7* 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

Out of their kitchen pipes the smoke of their 

casual breakfasts. 
Once a wide tow of coal-barges, loaded clear 

down to the gunwales, 
Gave us the slack of the current, with proper 

formalities shouted 
By the hoarse-throated stern-wheeler that pushed 

the black barges before her, 
And as she passed us poured a foamy cascade 

from her paddles. 
Then, as a raft of logs, which the spread of the 

barges had hidden, 
River-wide, weltered in sight, with a sudden 

jump forward the pilot 
Dropped his whole weight on the spokes of the 

wheel just in time to escape it. 



" Always give those fellows,' ' he joked, "all the 

leeway they ask for; 
Worst kind of thing on the river you want your 

boat to run into. 
Where had I got about Captain Dunlevy? Oh 

yes, I remember. 
Well, when the railroads began to run away from 

the steamboats, 
Taking the carrying trade in the very edge of 

the water, 

72 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

It was all up with the old flush times, and Cap- 
tain Dunlevy 
Had to climb down with the rest of us pilots till 

he was only 
Captain the same as any and every pilot is 

captain, 
Glad enough, too, to be getting his hundred and 

twenty-five dollars 
Through the months of the spring and fall while 

navigation was open. 
Never lowered himself, though, a bit from cap- 
tain and owner, 
Knew his rights and yours, and never would 

thought of allowing 
Any such thing as a liberty from you or taking 

one with you. 
I had been his cub, and all that I knew of the 

river 
Captain Dunlevy had learnt me ; and if you know 

what the feeling 
Is of a cub for the pilot that learns him the river, 

you'll trust me 
When I tell you I felt it the highest kind of an 

honor 
Having him for my partner; and when I came 

up to relieve him, 
One day, here at the wheel, and actu'lly thought 

that I found him 

73 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

Taking that island there on the left, I thought 

I was crazy. 
No, I couldn't believe my senses, and yet I 

couldn't endure it. 
Seeing him climb the spokes of the wheel to 

warp the Kanawha, 
With the biggest trip of passengers ever she 

carried, 
Round on the bar at the left that fairly stuck 

out of the water. 
Well, as I said, he learnt me all that I knew of 

the river, 
And was I to learn him now which side to take 

of an island 
When I knew he knew it like his right hand from 

his left hand? 
My, but I hated to speak! It certainly seemed 

like my tongue clove, 
Like the Bible says, to the roof of my mouth! 

But I had to. 
'Captain,' I says, and it seemed like another 

person was talking, 
'Do you usu'lly take that island there on the 

eastward?' 
'Yes,' he says, and he laughed, 'and I thought I 

had learnt you to do it, 
When you w r as going up.' 'But not going down, 

did you, captain?' 

74 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

'Down?' And he whirled at me, and, without 

ever stopping his laughing, 
Turned as white as a sheet, and his eyes fairly- 
bulged from their sockets. 
Then he whirled back again, and looked up and 

down on the river, 
Like he was hunting out the shape of the shore 

and the landmarks. 
Well, I suppose the thing has happened to every 

one sometime, 
When you find the points of the compass have 

swapped with each other, 
And at the instant you're looking, the North 

and the South have changed places. 
I knew what was in his mind as well as Dunlevy 

himself did. 
Neither one of us spoke a word for nearly a 

minute. 
Then in a kind of whisper he says, 'Take the 

wheel, Captain Davis!' 
Let the spokes fly, and while I made a jump 

forwards to catch them, 
Staggered into that chair — well, the very one 

you are in, ma'am. 
Set there breathing quick, and, when he could 

speak, all he said was, 
'This is the end of it for me on the river, Jim 

Davis,' 

75 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

Reached up over his head for his coat where it 

hung by that window, 
Trembled onto his feet, and stopped in the door 

there a second, 
Stared in hard like as if for good-by to the things 

he was used to, 
Shut the door behind him, and never come back 

again through it." 
While we were silent, not liking to prompt the 

pilot with questions, 
"Well," he said, at last, "it was no use to argue. 

We tried it, 
In the half-hearted way that people do that 

don't mean it* 
Every one was his friend here on the Kanawha, 

and we knew 
It was the first time he ever had lost his bearings, 

but he knew, 
In such a thing as that, that the first and the 

last are the same time. 
When we had got through trying our worst to 

persuade him, he only 
Shook his head and says, 'I am done for, boys, 

and you know it/ 
Left the boat at Wheeling, and left his life on 

the river — 
Left his life on the earth, you may say, for I 

don't call it living, 
76 



CAPTAIN DUNLEVY'S LAST TRIP 

Setting there homesick at home for the wheel 

he can never go back to. 
Reads the river-news regular; knows just the 

stage of the water 
Up and down the whole way from Cincinnati to 

Pittsburg; 
Follows every boat from the time she starts out 

in the spring-time 
Till she lays up in the summer, and then again 

in the winter; 
Wants to talk all about her and who is her cap- 
tain and pilot; 
Then wants to slide away to that everlastingly 

puzzling 
Thing that happened to him that morning on the 

Kanawha 
When he lost his bearings and North and South 

had changed places — 
No, I don't call that living, whatever the rest 

of you call it." 
We were silent again till that woman spoke up, 

"And what was it, 
Captain, that kept him from going back and 

being a pilot?" 
"Well, ma'am," after a moment the pilot pa- 
tiently answered, 
"I don't hardly believe that I could explain it 

exactly." 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 



IV 
THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

TTE never, by any chance, quite kept his word, 
* * though there was a moment in every case 
when he seemed to imagine doing what he said, 
and he took with mute patience the rakings which 
the ladies gave him when he disappointed them. 
Disappointed is not just the word, for the 
ladies did not really expect him to do what he 
said. They pretended to believe him when he 
promised, but at the bottom of their hearts they 
never did or could. He was gentle-mannered and 
soft-spoken, and when he set his head on one 
side, and said that a coat would be ready on 
Wednesday, or a dress on Saturday, and repeated 
his promise upon the same lady's expressed doubt, 
she would catch her breath and say that now she 
absolutely must have it on the day named, for 
otherwise she would not have a thing to put on. 
Then he would become very grave, and his soft 
tenor would deepen to a bass of unimpeachable 
6 81 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

veracity, and he would say, "Sure, lady, you 
have it." 

The lady would depart still doubting and slight- 
ly sighing, and he would turn to the customer 
who was waiting to have a button sewed on, or 
something like that, and ask him softly what it 
was he could do for him. If the customer offered 
him his appreciation of the case in hand, he 
would let his head droop lower, and in a yet deep- 
er bass deplore the doubt of the ladies as an 
idiosyncrasy of their sex. He would make the 
customer feel that he was a favorite customer 
whose rights to a perfect fidelity of word and 
deed must by no means be tampered with, and 
he would have the button sewed on or the rip 
sewed up at once, and refuse to charge anything, 
while the customer waited in his shirt-sleeves in 
the small, stuffy shop opening directly from the 
street. When he tolerantly discussed the pe- 
culiarities of ladies as a sex, he would endure to 
be laughed at, "for sufferance was the badge of 
all his tribe," and possibly he rather liked it. 

The favorite customer enjoyed being there when 
some lady came back on the appointed Wednes- 
day or Saturday, and the tailor came soothingly 
forward and showed her into the curtained alcove 
where she was to try on the garments, and then 
called into the inner shop for them. The shirt- 

82 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

sleeved journeyman, with his unbuttoned waist- 
coat-front all pins and threaded needles, would 
appear in his slippers with the things barely basted 
together, and the tailor would take them, with 
an airy courage, as if they were perfectly finished, 
and go in behind the curtain where the lady was 
waiting in a dishabille which the favorite cus- 
tomer, out of reverence for the sex, forbore to 
picture to himself. Then sounds of volcanic fury 
would issue from the alcove. "Now, Mr. Mor- 
rison, you have lied to me again, deliberately lied. 
Didn't I tell you I must have the things perfectly 
ready to-day? You see yourself that it will be 
another week before I can have my things." 
"A week? Oh, madam! But I assure you — " 
"Don't talk to me any more! It's the last 
time I shall ever come to you, but I suppose I 
can't take the work away from you as it is. 
M^n shall I have it?" 

"To-morrow. Yes, to-morrow noon. Sure!" 
"Now you know you are always out at noon. 
I should think you would be ashamed." 

"If it hadn't been for sickness in the family I 
would have finished your dress with my own hands. 
Sure I would. If you come here to-morrow noon 
you find your dress all ready for you." 

"I know I won't, but I will come, and you'd 
better have it ready." 

83 



THE; RETURN TO FAVOR 

"Oh, sure." 

The lady then added some generalities of 
opprobrium with some particular criticisms of 
the garments. Her voice sank into dispassionate 
murmurs in these, but it rose again in her re- 
newed sense of the wrong done her, and when 
she came from the alcove she went out of the 
street door purple. She reopened it to say, 
"Now, remember !" before she definitely dis- 
appeared. 

"Rather a stormy session, Mr. Morrison," the 
customer said. 

"Something fierce," Mr. Morrison sighed. 
But he did not seem much troubled, and he had 
one way with all his victims, no matter what 
mood they came or went in. 

One day the customer was by when a kind 
creature timidly upbraided him. "This is the 
third time you've disappointed me, Mr. Morri- 
son. I really wish you wouldn't promise me un- 
less you mean to do it. I don't think it's right 
for you." 

"Oh, but sure, madam! The things will be 
done, sure. We had a strike on us." 

"Well, I will trust you once more," the kind 
creature said. 

"You can depend on me, madam, sure." 

When she was gone the customer said: "I 
84 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

wonder you do that sort of thing, Mr. Morrison. 
You can't be surprised at their behaving rustily 
with you if you never keep your word." 

4 'Why, I assure you there are times when I 
don't know where to look, the way they go on. 
It is something awful. You ought to hear them 
once. And now they want the wote." He re- 
arranged some pieces of tumbled goods at the 
table where the customer sat, and put together 
the disheveled leaves of the fashion-papers which 
looked as if the ladies had scattered them in 
their rage. 

One day the customer heard two ladies waiting 
for their disappointments in the outer room while 
the tailor in the alcove was trying to persuade a 
third lady that positively her things would be 
sent home the next day before dark. The cus- 
tomer had now formed the habit of having his 
own clothes made by the tailor, and his system 
in avoiding disappointment was very simple. In 
the early fall he ordered a spring suit, and in the 
late spring it was ready. He never had any 
difficulty, but he was curious to learn how the 
ladies managed, and he listened with all his might 
while these two talked. 

"I always wonder we keep coming," one of 
them said. 

"Ill tell you why," the other said. "Because 
8 S 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

he's cheap, and we get things from a fourth to a 
third less than we can get them anywhere else. 
The quality is first rate, and he's absolutely honest. 
And, besides, he's a genius. The wretch has 
touch. The things have a style, a look, a hang! 
Really it's something wonderful. Sure it iss," 
she ended in the tailor's accent, and then they 
both laughed and joined in a common sigh. 

"Well, I don't believe he means to deceive 
any one." 

"Oh, neither do I. I believe he expects to 
do everything he says. And one can't help liking 
him even when he doesn't." 

"He's a good while getting through with her," 
the first lady said, meaning the unseen lady in 
the alcove. 

"She'll be a good while longer getting through 
with hint, if he hasn't them ready the next time," 
the second lady said. 

But the lady in the alcove issued from it with 
an impredicable smile, and the tailor came up 
to the others, and deferred to their wishes with 
a sort of voiceless respect. 

He gave the customer a glance of good-fellow- 
ship, and said to him, radiantly: "Your things 
all ready for you, this morning. As soon as I — " 

"Oh, no hurry," the customer responded. 

"I won't be a minute," the tailor said, pulling 
86 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

the curtain of the alcove aside, and then there 
began those sounds of objurgation and expostula- 
tion, although the ladies had seemed so amiable 
before. 

The customer wondered if they did not all en- 
joy it; the ladies in their patience under long 
trial, and the tailor in the pleasure of practising 
upon it. But perhaps he did believe in the 
things he promised. He might be so much a 
genius as to have no grasp of facts; he might 
have thought that he could actually do what 
he said. 

The customer's question on these points found 
answer when one day the tailor remarked, as it 
were out of a clear sky, that he had sold his 
business; sold it to the slippered journeyman who 
used to come in his shirt-sleeves, with his vest- 
front full of pins and needles, bringing the basted 
garments to be tried on the ladies who had been 
promised them perfectly finished. 

"He will do your clothes all right,' ' he explained 
to the customer. "He is a first-rate cutter and 
fitter; he knows the whole business.' ' 

"But why — why — " the customer began. 

"I couldn't stand it. The way them ladies 
would talk to a person, when you done your best 
to please them; it's something fierce." 

"Yes, I know. But I thought you liked it, 
87 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

from the way you always promised them and 
never kept your word." 

"And if I hadn't promised them?" the tailor 
returned with some show of feeling. "They 
wanted me to promise them — they made me — 
they wouldn't have gone away without it. Sure. 
Every one wanted her things before every one. 
You had got to think of that." 

"But you had to think of what they would 
say." 

"Say? Sometimes I thought they would hit 
me. One lady said she had a notion to slap me 
once. It's no way to talk." 

"But you didn't seem to mind it." 

"I didn't mind it for a good while. Then I 
couldn't stand it. So I sold." 

He shook his head sadly ; but the customer had 
no comfort to offer him. He asked when his 
clothes would be done, and the tailor told him 
when, and then they were not. The new pro- 
prietor tried them on, but he would not say 
just when they would be finished. 

"We have a good deal of work already for some 
ladies that been disappointed. Now we try a new 
way. We tell people exactly what we do." 

"Well, that's right," the customer said, but 
in his heart he was not sure he liked the new 
way. 

88 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR * 

The day before his clothes were promised he 
dropped in; From the curtained alcove he heard 
low murmurs, the voice of the new proprietor 
and the voice of some lady trying on, and being 
severely bidden not to expect her things at a time 
she suggested. "No, madam. We got too much 
work on hand already. These things, they will 
not be done before next week." 

"I told you to-morrow/ ' the same voice said 
to another lady, and the new proprietor came 
out with an unfinished coat in his hand. 

"I know you did, but I thought you would be 
better than your word, and so I came to-day. 
Well, then, to-morrow." 

"Yes, to-morrow," the new proprietor said, 
but he did not seem to have liked the lady's joke. 
He did not look happy. 

A few weeks after that the customer came for 
some little alterations in his new suit. 

In the curtained alcove he heard the murmurs 
of trying on, much cheerfuller murmurs than be- 
fore; the voice of a lady lifted in gladness, in 
gaiety, and an incredible voice replying, "Oh, 
sure, madam." 

Then the old proprietor came out in his shirt- 
sleeves and slippers, with his waistcoat-front full 
of pins and needles, just like the new proprietor 
in former days. 

89 



THE RETURN TO FAVOR 

"Why!" the customer exclaimed. "Have you 
bought back?" 

"No. I'm just here like a journeyman already. 
The new man he want me to come. He don't 
get along very well with his way. He's all right; 
he's a good man and a first-class tailor. But," 
and the former proprietor looked down at the 
basted garment hanging over his arm, and picked 
off an irrelevant thread from it, "he thinks I get 
along better with the ladies." 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 



V 
SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

'"THE figure of a woman sat crouched forward 
* on one of the lowermost steps of the brown- 
stone dwelling which was keeping a domestic 
tradition in a street mostly gone to shops and 
small restaurants and local express-offices. The 
house was black behind its closed shutters, and 
the woman remained sitting there because no one 
could have come out of its door for a year past 
to hunt her away. The neighborhood policeman 
faltered in going by, and then he kept on. The 
three people who came out of the large, old- 
fashioned hotel, half a block off, on their way 
for dinner to a French table d'hdte which they had 
heard of, stopped and looked at the woman. 
They were a father and his son and daughter, and 
it was something like a family instinct that con- 
trolled them, in their pause before the woman 
crouching on the steps. 

It was the early dusk of a December day, and 
the day was very chilly. "She seems to be sick ov 

93 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

something/ ' the father vaguely surmised. "Or 
asleep." 

The three looked at the woman, but they did 
nothing for a moment. They would rather have 
gone on, but they waited to see if anything would 
happen to release them from the spell that they 
seemed to have laid upon themselves. They were 
conditional New-Yorkers of long sojourn, and it 
was from no apparent motive that the son wore 
evening dress, which his unbuttoned overcoat 
discovered, and an opera-hat. He would not have 
dressed so for that problematical French table 
d'hdte; probably he was going on later to some 
society affair. He now put in effect the father's 
impulse to go closer and look at the woman. 

"She seems to be asleep, 7 * he reported. 

"Shouldn't you think she would take cold? 
She will get her death there. Oughtn't we to do 
something?" the daughter asked, but she left it 
to the father, and he said: 

"Probably somebody will come by." 

"That we could leave her to?" the daughter 
pursued. 

"We could do that without waiting," the son 
commented. 

"Well; yes," the father assented; but they did 
not go on. They waited, helplessly, and then 
somebody came by. It was a young girl, not very 

94 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

definite in the dusk, except that she was unmis- 
takably of the working class; she was simply 
dressed, though with the New York instinct for 
clothes. Their having stopped there seemed to 
stay her involuntarily, and after a glance in the 
direction of their gaze she asked the daughter: 

"Is she sick, do you think ?" 

"We don't know what's the matter. But she 
oughtn't to stay there." 

Something velvety in the girl's voice had made 
its racial quality sensible to the ear; as she went 
up to the crouching woman and bent forward 
over her and then turned to them, a street lamp 
threw its light on her face, and they saw that she 
was a light shade of colored girl. 

"She seems to be sleeping." 

"Perhaps," the son began, "she's not quite — " 
But he did not go on. 

The girl looked round at the others and sug- 
gested, "She must be somebody's mother!" 

The others all felt abashed in their several 
sorts and degrees, but in their several sorts and 
degrees they all decided that there was something 
romantic, sentimental, theatrical in the girl's 
words, like something out of some cheap story- 
paper story. 

The father wondered if that kind of thing was 
current among that kind of people. He had a 

95 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

sort of esthetic pleasure in the character and 
condition expressed by the words. 

"Well, yes," he said, "if she has children, or 
has had." The girl looked at him uncertainly, 
and then he added, "But, of course — " 

The son went up to the woman again, and 
asked: "Aren't you well? Can we do anything 
for you? It won't do to stay here, you know." 
The woman only made a low murmur, and he 
said to his sister, "Suppose we get her up." 

His sister did not come forward promptly, and 
the colored girl said, "111 help you." 

She took one arm of the woman and the son 
took the other, and they lifted her, without her 
connivance, to her feet and kept her on them. 
Then they walked her down the steps. On the 
level below she showed taller than either of them; 
she was bundled up in different incoherent wraps; 
her head was muffled, and she wore a battered 
bonnet at an involuntary slant. 

"I don't know exactly what we shall do with 
her," the son said. 

"We ought to get her home somehow," the 
daughter said. 

The father proposed nothing, but the colored 
girl said, "If we keep walking her along, we'll 
come to a policeman and we can — " 

A hoarse rumble of protest came from the 
96 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

muffled head of the woman, and the girl put her 
ear closer. ' ' Want to go home ? Well, the police- 
man will take you. We don't know where you 
live, and we haven't the time." 

The woman seemed to have nothing to say 
further, and they began walking her westward; 
the colored girl supported her on one hand, and 
the son, in his evening dress and opera-hat, on 
the other. 

The daughter followed in a vague anxiety, but 
the father went along, enjoying the anomaly, and 
happy in his relish of that phrase, "She must be 
somebody's mother." It now sounded to him 
like a catch from one of those New York songs, 
popular in the order of life where the mother 
represents what is best and holiest. He recalled 
a vaudeville ballad with the refrain of "A Boy's 
Best Friend is his Mother," which, when he heard 
it in a vaudeville theater, threatened the gallery 
floor under the applauding feet of the frenzied 
audience. Probably this colored girl belonged to 
that order of life; he wished he could know her 
social circumstance and what her outlook on the 
greater world might be. She seemed a kind crea- 
ture, poor thing, and he respected her. " Some- 
body's mother" — he liked that. 

They all walked westward, aimlessly, except 
that the table d'hote where they had meant to dine 
7 97 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

was in that direction; they had heard of it as an 
amusingly harmless French place, and they were 
fond of such mild adventures. 

The old woman contributed nothing to the 
definition of their progress. She stumbled and 
mumbled along, but between Seventh Avenue and 
Eighth she stubbornly arrested her guardians. 
"She says' ' — the colored girl translated some ob- 
scure avowal across her back — "she says she 
wants to go home, and she lives up in Harlem." 

"Oh, well, that's good," the father said, with an 
optimistic amiability. "We'd better help walk 
her across to Ninth Avenue and put her on a car, 
and tell the conductor where to let her off." 

He was not helping walk her himself, but he 
enjoyed his son's doing it in evening dress and 
opera-hat, with that kind colored girl on the 
other side of the mother; the composition was 
agreeably droll. The daughter did not like it, 
and she cherished the ideal of a passing policeman 
to take the old woman in charge. 

No policeman passed, though great numbers of 
other people met them without apparently find- 
ing anything noticeable in the spectacle which 
their group presented. Among the crowds going 
and coming on the avenues which they crossed 
scarcely any turned to look at them, or was moved 
by the sense of anything odd in them. 

98 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

The old woman herself did nothing to attract 
public notice till they were midway between 
Seventh and Eighth avenues. She mumbled 
something from time to time which the colored 
girl interpreted to the rest as her continued wish 
to go home. She was now clearer about her 
street and number. The girl, as if after question 
of her own generous spirit, said she did not see 
how she could go with her; she was expected at 
home herself. 

"Oh, you won't have to go with her; we'll just 
put her aboard the Ninth Avenue car," the father 
encouraged her. He would have encouraged any 
one; he was enjoying the whole affair. 

At a certain moment, for no apparent reason, 
the mother decided to sit down on a door-step. 
It proved to be the door-step of a house where 
from time to time colored people — sometimes of 
one sex, sometimes of another — went in or came 
out. The door seemed to open directly into a 
large room where dancing and dining were going 
on concurrently. At a long table colored people 
sat eating, and behind their chairs on both sides 
of the room and at the ends of the table colored 
couples were waltzing. 

The effect was the more curious because, ex- 
cept for some almost inaudible music, the scene 
passed in silence. Those who were eating were not 

99 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

visibly incommoded by those revolving at their 
backs; the waltzers turned softly around and 
around, untempted by the table now before them, 
now behind them. When some of the diners or dan- 
cers came out, they stumbled over the old woman 
on the door-step without minding or stopping to 
inquire. Those outside, when they went in, fell 
over her with like equanimity and joined the 
strange company within. 
The father murmured to himself the lines, 

"'Vast forms that move fantastically 
To a discordant melody — '" 

with a remote trouble of mind because the words 
were at once so graphic and yet so imperfectly 
applicable. The son and daughter exchanged a 
silent wonder as long as they could bear it; then 
the daughter asked the colored girl : 

"What is it?" 

"It's a boarding-house," the girl answered, 
simply. 

"Oh," the daughter said. 

Sounds of more decided character than before 
now came from the figure on the door-step. 

"She seems to be saying something," the 
daughter suggested in general terms. "What is 
she saying?" she asked the colored girl. 

The girl stooped over and listened. Then she 
answered, "She's swearing." 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

1 ' Swearing ? What about ? Whom is she swear- 
ing at?" 

"At me, I reckon. She says, why don't I take 
her home." 

"Well, why doesn't she get up, then?" 

"She says she won't." 

"We can't carry her to the car," the daughter 
noted. 

"Oh, why not?" the father merrily demanded. 

The daughter turned to her brother. They were 
both very respectful to their father, but the son 
agreed with his sister when she said : ' ' Papa would 
joke about anything. But this has passed a joke. 
We must get this old thing up and start her off." 

Upon experiment they could not get the old 
thing up, even with the help of the kind colored 
girl. They had to let her be, and the colored girl 
reported, after stooping over her again, "She says 
she can't walk." 

1 ' She walked here well enough, ' ' the daughter said. 

"Not very well," the father amended. 

His daughter did not notice him. She said to 
her brother: "Well, now you must go and find 
a policeman. It's strange none has gone by." 

It was also strange that still their group re- 
mained without attracting the notice of the 
passers. Nobody stopped to speak or even stare; 
perhaps the phenomena of that boarding-house 

IOI 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

had ceased to have surprises for the public of the 
neighborhood, and they in their momentary rela- 
tion to it would naturally be without interest. 

The brother went away, leaving his sister with 
their father and that kind colored creature in 
charge of the old woman, now more and more 
quiescent on the door-step; she had ceased to 
swear, or even to speak. The brother came back 
after a time that seemed long, and said that he 
could not find a policeman anywhere, and at the 
same moment, as if the officer had been following 
at his heels, a policeman crossed the street from 
just behind him. 

The daughter ran after him, and asked if he 
would not come and look at the old woman who 
had so steadfastly remained in their charge, and 
she rapidly explained. 

"Sure, lady," the policeman said, and he 
turned from crossing the street and went up to 
the old woman. He laid his hand on her shoul- 
der, and his touch seemed magical. "What's the 
matter? Can't you stand up?" She stood up 
as if at something familiar in the voice of au- 
thority. "Where do you live?" She gave an 
address altogether different from that she had 
given before — a place on the next avenue, within 
a block or two. "You'd better go home. You 
can walk, can't you?" 

102 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

"I can walk well enough/ ■ she answered in a 
tone of vexation, and she made her word good 
by walking quite actively away in the direction 
she had given. 

The kind colored girl became a part of the 
prevalent dark after refusing the thanks of the 
others. The daughter then fervently offered them 
to the policeman. 

"That's all right, lady," he said, and the in- 
cident had closed except for her emotion at seeing 
him enter a police-station precisely across the 
street, where they could have got a dozen police- 
men in a moment. 

"Well," the father said, "we might as well go 
to our French table d'hote now." 

"Oh," the son said, as if that reminded him, 
"the place seems to be shut." 

"Well, then, we might as well go back to the 
hotel," the father decided. "I dare say we shall 
do quite as well there." 

On the way the young people laughed over the 
affair and their escape from it, especially at the 
strange appearance and disappearance of the kind 
colored girl, with her tag of sentiment, and at the 
instant compliance of the old woman with the 
suggestion of the policeman. 

The father followed, turning the matter over 
in his mind. Did mere motherhood hallow that 

103 



SOMEBODY'S MOTHER 

old thing to the colored girl and her sort and 
condition? Was there a superstition of mother- 
hood among such people which would endear this 
disreputable old thing to their affection and rev- 
erence? Did such people hold mothers in ten- 
derer regard than people of larger means? Would 
a mother in distress or merely embarrassment 
instantly appeal to their better nature as a case 
of want or sickness in the neighborhood always 
appealed to their compassion ? Would her family 
now welcome the old thing home from her aberra- 
tion more fondly than the friends of one who had 
arrived in a carriage among them in a good street ? 
But, after all, how little one knew of other people! 
How little one knew of one self, for that matter! 
How next to nothing one knew of Somebody's 
Mother! It did not necessarily follow from any- 
thing they knew of her that she was a mother at 
all. Her motherhood might be the mere figment 
of that kind colored girl's emotional fancy. She 
might be Nobody's Mother. 

When it came to this the father laughed, too. 
Why, anyhow, were mothers more sacred than 
fathers? If they had found an old man in that 
old Woman's condition on those steps, would that 
kind colored girl have appealed to them in his 
behalf as Somebody's Father? 



THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 



VI 
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

HE had gone down at Christmas, where our 
host 
Had opened up his house on the Maine coast, 
For the week's holidays, and we were all, 
On Christmas night, sitting in the great hall, 
About the corner fireplace, while we told 
Stories like those that people, young and old, 
Have told at Christmas firesides from the first, 
Till one who crouched upon the hearth, and 

nursed 
His knees in his claspt arms, threw back his head, 
And fixed our host with laughing eyes, and said, 
"This is so good, here — with your hickory logs 
Blazing like natural-gas ones on the dogs, 
And sending out their flicker on the wall 
And rafters of your mock-baronial hall, 
All in fumed-oak, and on your polished floor, 
And the steel-studded panels of your door — 
I think you owe the general make-believe 
Some sort of story that will somehow give 

107 



THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

A more ideal completeness to our case, 

And make each several listener in his place — 

Or hers — sit up, with a real goose-flesh creeping 

All over him — or her — in proper keeping 

With the locality and hour and mood. 

Come! ,, And amid the cries of "Yes!" and 

1 ' Good!" 
Our host laughed back; then, with a serious air, 
Looked around him on our hemicycle, where 
He sat midway of it. "Why," he began, 
But interrupted by the other man, 
He paused for him to say: "Nothing remote, 
But something with the actual Yankee note 
Of here and now in it!" "Ill do my best," 
Our host replied, "to satisfy a guest. 
What do you say to Barberry Cove? And would 
Five years be too long past ?" " No, both are good. 
Go on!" "You noticed that big house to-day 
Close to the water, and the sloop that lay, 
Stripped for the winter, there, beside the pier? 
Well, there she has lain just so, year after year; 
And she will never leave her pier again; 
But once, each spring she sailed in sun or rain, 
For Bay Chaleur — or Bay Shaloor, as they 
Like better to pronounce it down this way." 

"I like Shaloor myself rather the best. 
But go ahead," said the exacting guest. 

108 



THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

And with a glance around at us that said, 
"Don't let me bore you!" our host went ahead. 

"Captain Gilroy built the big house, and he 
Still lives there with his aging family. 
He built the sloop, and when he used to come 
Back from the Banks he made her more his 

home, 
With his two boys, than the big house. The two 
Counted with him a good half of her crew, 
Until it happened, on the Banks, one day 
The oldest boy got in a steamer's way, 
And went down in his dory. In the fall 
The others came without him. That was all 
That showed in either one of them except 
That now the father and the brother slept 
Ashore, and not on board. When the spring 

came 
They sailed for the old fishing-ground the same 
As ever. Yet, not quite the same. The brother, 
If you believed what folks say, kissed his mother 
Good-by in going; and by general rumor, 
The father, so far yielding as to humor 
His daughters' weakness, rubbed his stubbly 

cheek 
Against their lips. Neither of them would speak, 
But the dumb passion of their love and grief 
In so much show at parting found relief, 

109 



THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

"The weeks passed and the months. Some- 
times they heard 
At home, by letter, from the sloop, or word 
Of hearsay from the fleet. But by and by 
Along about the middle of July, 
A time in which they had no news began, 
And holding unbrokenly through August, ran 
Into September. Then, one afternoon, 
While the world hung between the sun and 

moon, 
And while the mother and her girls were sitting 
Together with their sewing and their knitting, — 
Before the early-coming evening's gloom 
Had gathered round them in the living-room, 
Helplessly wondering to each other when 
They should hear something from their absent 

men,— 
They saw, all three, against the window-pane, 
A face that came and went, and came again, 
Three times, as though for each of them, about 
As high up from the porch's floor without 
As a man's head would be that stooped to stare 
Into the room on their own level there. 
Its eyes dwelt on them wistfully as if 
Longing to speak with the dumb lips some grief 
They could not speak. The women did not start 
Or scream, though each one of them, in her 
heart, 

no 



THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

Knew she was looking on no living face, 
But stared, as dumb as it did, in her place.' ' 

Here our host paused, and one sigh broke from 

all 
Our circle whom his tale had held in thrall. 
But he who had required it of him spoke 
In what we others felt an ill-timed joke: 
"Well, this is something like!" A girl said, 

"Don't!" 
As if it hurt, and he said, "Well, I won't. 
Go on!" And in a sort of muse our host 
Said: "I suppose we all expect a ghost 
Will sometimes come to us. But I doubt if we 
Are moved by its coming as we thought to be. 
At any rate, the women were not scared, 
But, as I said, they simply sat and stared 
Till the face vanished. Then the mother said, 
'It was your father, girls, and he is dead.' 
But both had known him; and now all went on 
Much as before till three weeks more were 

gone, 
When, one night sitting as they sat before, 
Together with their mother, at the door 
They heard a fumbling hand, and on the walk 
Up from the pier, the tramp and muffled talk 
Of different wind-blown voices that they knew 
For the hoarse voices of their father's crew. 

in 



THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

Then the door opened, and their father stood 
Before them, palpably in flesh and blood. 
The mother spoke for all, her own misgiving: 
'Father, is this your ghost? Or are you living?' 
'I am alive!' 'But in this very place 
We saw your face look, like a spirit's face, 
There through that window, just three weeks 

ago, 
And now you are alive!' 'I did not know 
That I had come; all I know is that then 
I wanted to tell you folks here that our Ben 
Was dying of typhoid fever. He raved of you 
So that I could not think what else to do. 
He's there in Bay Shaloor!' 

"Well, that's the end." 
And rising up to mend the fire our friend 
Seemed trying to shun comment; but in vain: 
The exacting guest came at him once again; 
"You must be going to fall down, I thought, 
There at the climax, when your story brought 
The skipper home alive and well. But no, 
You saved yourself with honor." The girl said, 

"Oh," 
Who spoke before, "it's wonderful! But you, 
How could you think of anything so true, 
So delicate, as the father's wistful face 
Coming there at the window in the place 

112 



THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 

Of the dead son's! And then, that quaintest 

touch, 
Of half-apology — that he felt so much, 
He had to come! How perfectly New England! 

Well, 
I hope nobody will undertake to tell 
A common or garden ghost-story to-night.' ' 

Our host had turned again, and at her light 
And playful sympathy he said, "My dear, 
I hope that no one will imagine here 
I have been inventing in the tale that's done. 
My little story's charm if it has one 
Is from no skill of mine. One does not change 
The course of fable from its wonted range 
To such effect as I have seemed to do: 
Only the fact could make my story true." 



AN EXPERIENCE 



VII 
AN EXPERIENCE 

"COR a long time after the event my mind 
* dealt with the poor man in helpless con- 
jecture, and it has now begun to do so again 
for no reason that I can assign. All that I ever 
heard about him was that he was some kind of 
insurance man. Whether life, fire, or marine in- 
surance I never found out, and I am not sure 
that I tried to find out. 

There was something in the event which dis- 
charged him of all obligation to define himself 
of this or that relation to life, He must have had 
some relation to it such as we all bear, and since 
the question of him has come up with me again 
I have tried him in several of those relations — 
father, son, brother, husband — without identify- 
ing him very satisfyingly in either. 

As I say, he seemed by what happened to be 
liberated from the debt we owe in that kind to 
one another's curiosity, sympathy, or whatever. 
I cannot say what errand it was that brought 

117 



AN EXPERIENCE 

him to the place, a strange, large, indeterminate 
open room, where several of us sat occupied with 
different sorts of business, but, as it seems to me 
now, by only a provisional right to the place. 
Certainly the corner allotted to my own editorial 
business was of temporary assignment; I was 
there until we could find a more permanent office. 
The man had nothing to do with me or with the 
publishers; he had no manuscript, or plan for 
an article which he wished to propose and to talk 
himself into writing, so that he might bring it 
with a claim to acceptance, as though he had 
been asked to write it. In fact, he did not even 
look of the writing sort ; and his affair with some 
other occupant of that anomalous place could 
have been in no wise literary. Probably it was 
some kind of insurance business, and I have been 
left with the impression of fussiness in his con- 
duct of it; he had to my involuntary attention 
an effect of conscious unwelcome with it. 

After subjectively dealing with this impression, 
I ceased to notice him, without being able to give 
myself to my own work. The day was choking 
hot, of a damp that clung about one, and forbade 
one so much effort as was needed to relieve one 
of one's discomfort; to pull at one's wilted collar 
and loosen the linen about one's reeking neck 
meant exertion which one willingly forbore; it 

118 



AN EXPERIENCE 

was less suffering to suffer passively than to 
suffer actively. The day was of the sort which 
begins with a brisk heat, and then, with a falling 
breeze, decays into mere swelter. To come in- 
doors out of the sun was no escape from the 
heat; my window opened upon a shaded alley 
where the air w r as damper without being cooler 
than the air within. 

At last I lost myself in my work with a kind 
of humid interest in the psychological inquiry of 
a contributor who was dealing with a matter 
rather beyond his power. I did not think that 
he was fortunate in having cast his inquiry in the 
form of a story; I did not think that his contrast 
of love and death as the supreme facts of life was 
what a subtler or stronger hand could have made 
it, or that the situation gained in effectiveness 
from having the hero die in the very moment of 
his acceptance. In his supposition that the 
reader would care more for his hero simply be- 
cause he had undergone that tremendous catas- 
trophe, the writer had omitted to make him in- 
teresting otherwise; perhaps he could not. 

My mind began to wander from the story and 
not very relevantly to employ itself with the ques- 
tion of how far our experiences really affect our 
characters. I remembered having once classed 
certain temperaments as the stuff of tragedy, and 

119 



AN EXPERIENCE 

others as the stuff of comedy, and of having found 
a greater cruelty in the sorrows which light natures 
undergo, as unfit and disproportionate for them. 
Disaster, I tacitly decided, was the fit lot of serious 
natures; when it befell the frivolous it was more 
than they ought to have been made to bear; it 
was not of their quality. Then by the mental 
zigzagging which all thinking is I thought of my- 
self and whether I was of this make or that. If 
it was more creditable to be of serious stuff than 
frivolous, though I had no agency in choosing, I 
asked myself how I should be affected by the 
sight of certain things, like the common calamities 
reported every day in the papers which I had 
hitherto escaped seeing. By another zigzag I 
thought that I had never known a day so close 
and stifling and humid. I then reflected upon the 
comparative poverty of the French language, 
which I was told had only that one word for the 
condition we could call by half a dozen different 
names, as humid, moist, damp, sticky, reeking, 
sweltering, and so on. I supposed that a book of 
synonyms would give even more English adjec- 
tives ; I thought of looking, but my book of syno- 
nyms was at the back of my table, and I would 
have to rise for it. Then I questioned whether 
the French language was so destitute of adjectives, 
after all; I preferred to doubt it rather than rise. 

120 



AN EXPERIENCE 

With no more logic than those other vagaries 
had, I realized that the person who had started 
me in them was no longer in the room. He must 
have gone outdoors, and I visualized him in the 
street pushing about, crowded hither and thither, 
and striking against other people as he went and 
came. I was glad I was not in his place; I be- 
lieved I should have fallen in a faint from the 
heat, as I had once almost done in New York on a 
day like that. From this my mind jumped to 
the thought of sudden death in general. Was it 
such a happy thing as people pretended? For 
the person himself, yes, perhaps ; but not for those 
whom he had left at home, say, in the morning, 
and who were expecting him at home in the eve- 
ning. I granted that it was generally accepted as 
the happiest death, but no one that had tried it 
had said so. To be sure, one was spared a long 
sickness, with suffering from pain and from the 
fear of death. But one had no time for making 
one's peace with God, as it used to be said, and 
after all there might be something in death-bed 
repentance, although cultivated people no longer 
believed in it. Then I reverted to the family un- 
prepared for the sudden death: the mother, the 
wife, the children. I struggled to get away from 
the question, but the vagaries which had lightly 
dispersed themselves before clung persistently to 

121 



AN EXPERIENCE 

the theme now. I felt that it was like a bad 
dream. That was a promising diversion. Had 
one any sort of volition in the quick changes of 
dreams? One was aware of finding a certain 
nightmare insupportable, and of breaking from 
it as by main force, and then falling into a deep, 
sweet sleep. Was death something like waking 
from a dream such as that, which this life largely 
was, and then sinking into a long, restful slumber, 
and possibly never waking again? 

Suddenly I perceived that the man had come 
back. He might have been there some time with 
his effect of fussing and his pathetic sense of un- 
welcome. I had not noticed; I only knew that 
he stood at the half -open door with the knob of 
it in his hand looking into the room blankly. 

As he stood there he lifted his hand and rubbed 
it across his forehead as if in a sort of daze from 
the heat. I recognized the gesture as one very 
characteristic of myself; I had often rubbed my 
hand across my forehead on a close, hot day like 
that. Then the man suddenly vanished as if 
he had sunk through the floor. 

People who had not noticed that he was there 
noticed now that he was not there. Some made 
a crooked rush toward the place where he had 
been, and one of those helpful fellow-men who 
are first in all needs lifted his head and mainly 

122 



AN EXPERIENCE 

carried him into the wide space which the street 
stairs mounted to, and laid him on the floor. 
It was darker, if not cooler there, and we stood 
back to give him the air which he drew in with 
long, deep sighs. One of us ran down the stairs 
to the street for a doctor, wherever he might be 
found, and ran against a doctor at the last step. 

The doctor came and knelt over the prostrate 
figure and felt its pulse, and put his ear down to 
its heart. It, which has already in my telling 
ceased to be he, drew its breath in those long sus- 
pirations which seemed to search each more pro- 
foundly than the last the lurking life, drawing it 
from the vital recesses and expelling it in those 
vast sighs. 

They went on and on, and established in our 
consciousness the expectation of indefinite con- 
tinuance. We knew that the figure there was 
without such consciousness as ours, unless it was 
something so remotely withdrawn that it could 
not manifest itself in any signal to our senses. 
There was nothing tragical in the affair, but it 
had a surpassing dignity. It was as if the figure 
was saying something to the life in each of us 
which none of us would have words to interpret, 
speaking some last message from the hither side 
of that bourne from which there is no returning. 

There was a clutch upon my heart which tight- 
123 



AN EXPERIENCE 

ened with the slower and slower succession of 
those awful breaths. Then one was drawn and 
expelled and then another was not drawn. I 
waited for the breathing to begin again, and it 
did not begin. The doctor rose from kneeling 
over the figure that had been a man, and uttered, 
with a kind of soundlessness, "Gone," and me- 
chanically dusted his fingers with the thumbs of 
each hand from their contact with what had now 
become all dust forever. 

Th&t helpfulest one among us laid a cloth over 
the face, and the rest of us went away. It was 
finished. The man was done with the sorrow 
which, in our sad human order, must now begin 
for those he loved and who loved him. I tried 
vaguely to imagine their grief for not having been 
uselessly with him at the last, and I could not. 
The incident remained with me like an experi- 
ence, something I had known rather than seen. 
I could not alienate it by my pity and make it 
another's. They whom it must bereave seemed 
for the time immeasurably removed from the 
fact. 



THE BOARDERS 



VIII 
THE BOARDERS 

T^HE boarder who had eloped was a student 
* at the theological seminary, and he had 
really gone to visit his family, so that he had a 
fairly good conscience in giving this color to the 
fact that he was leaving the place permanently 
because he could not bear it any longer. It was 
a shade of deceit to connive with his room-mate 
for the custody of his carpet-bag and the few socks 
and collars and the one shirt and summer coat 
which did not visibly affect its lankness when 
gathered into it from his share of the bureau- 
drawers; but he did not know what else to do, 
and he trusted to a final forgiveness when all the 
facts were considered by a merciful providence. 
His board was fully paid, and he had suffered long. 
He argued with his room-mate that he could do 
no good by remaining, and that he would have 
stayed if he could have believed there was any 
use. Besides, the food was undermining his 
health, and the room with that broken window 

127 



THE BOARDERS 

had given him a cold already. He had a right to 
go, and it was his duty to himself and the friends 
who were helping him through the seminary not 
to get sick. 

He did not feel that he had convinced his 
room-mate, who took charge of his carpet-bag 
and now sat with it between his feet waiting the 
signal of the fugitive's surreptitious return for it. 
He was a vague-looking young man, presently in 
charge of the "Local and Literary' ' column of the 
one daily paper of the place, and he had just 
explained to the two other boarders who were 
watching with him for the event that he was not 
certain whether it was the supper, or the anxiety 
of the situation, or just what it was that was 
now affecting his digestion. 

The fellow-boarders, who sat on the edge of 
the bed, in default of the one unbroken chair 
which their host kept for himself, as easier than 
a mattress to get up from suddenly, did not take 
sides for or against him in his theories of his dis- 
comfort. One of them glanced at the broken 
window. 

"How do you glaze that in the daytime? You 
can't use the bolster then?" 

"I'm not in, much, in the daytime." 

It was a medical student who had spoken, but 
he was now silent, and the other said, after they 

128 



THE BOARDERS 

had listened to the twitter of a piano in the parlor 
under the room, "That girl's playing will be the 
death of me." 

"Not if her mother's cooking isn't," the medi- 
cal student, whose name was Wallace, observed 
with a professional effect. 

"Why don't you prescribe something for it?" 
the law student suggested. 

"Which?" Wallace returned. 

"I don't believe anything could cure the play- 
ing. I must have meant the cooking." 

"You're a promising young jurist, Blakeley. 
What makes you think I could cure the cooking?" 

"Oh, I just wondered. The sick one gets 
paler every day. I wonder what ails her." 

"She's not my patient." 

"Oh! Hippocratic oath. Rather fine of you, 
Wallace. But if she's not your patient — " 

"Listen!" their host interrupted, sharply. After 
a joint silence he added: "No. It must have 
been the sleet." 

"Well, Briggs," the law student said, "if it 
must have been the sleet, what mustn't it have 
been?" 

"Oh!" Briggs explained, "I thought it was 
Phillips. He was to throw a handful of gravel 
at the window." 

"And then you were to run down with his bag 
9 I2 9 



THE BOARDERS 

and help him to make his escape from a friendless 
widow. Well, I don't know that I blame him. 
If I didn't owe two weeks' board, I'd leave my- 
self — though I hope I shouldn't sneak away. And 
if Mrs. Betterson didn't owe Wallace, here, two 
weeks' board, we'd walk off together arm-in-arm 
at high noon. I can't understand how he ever 
came to advance her the money." 

Wallace rose from the bed, and kicked each leg 
out to dislodge the tight trousers of the middle 
eighteen-fifties which had caught on the tops of 
his high boots. "You're a tonguey fellow, Blake- 
ley. But you'll find, as you live long, that there 
are several things you can't explain." 

"I'll tell you what," Blakeley said. "We'll 
get Mrs. Betterson to take your loan for my 
debt, and we'll go at once." 

"You can propose something like that before 
the justice of the peace in your first pettifogging 
case." 

"I believe Wallace likes to stay. And yet he 
must know from his anatomical studies, better 
than the animals themselves, what cuts of meat 
the old lady gives us. I shouldn't be so fastidious 
about the cuts, if she didn't treat them all with 
pork gravy. Well, I mustn't be too hard on a 
lone widow that I owe board to. I don't suppose 
his diet had anything to do with the deep damna- 

130 



THE BOARDERS 

tion of the late Betterson's taking off. Does that 
stove of yours smoke, Briggs?" 

"Not when there isn't a fire in it." 

"I just asked. Wallace's stove smokes, fire or 
no fire. It takes advantage of the old lady's in- 
debtedness to him. There seem," he added, 
philosophically, "to be just two occupations open 
to widows who have to support themselves: 
millinery business for young ones, boarding- 
housing for old ones. It is rather restricted. 
What do you suppose she puts into the mince- 
pies? Mince-pies are rather a mystery at the 
best." 

Wallace was walking up and down the room 
still in some difficulty with his trousers-legs, and 
kicking out from time to time to dislodge them. 
"How long should you say Blakeley had been 
going on?" he asked Briggs. 

"You never can tell," Briggs responded. "I 
think he doesn't know himself." 

"Well said, youthful scribe! With such listen- 
ers as you two, I could go on forever. Consider 
yourselves clapped jovially on the back, my gentle 
Briggs; I can't get up to do it from the hollow 
of your bed here. As you were saying, the won- 
der about these elderly widows who keep boarding- 
houses is the domestic dilapidation they fall into. 
If they've ever known how to cook a meal or 

131 



THE BOARDERS 

sweep a room or make a bed, these arts desert 
them in the presence of their boarders. Their 
only aim in life seems to be preventing the escape 
of their victims, and they either let them get into 
debt for their board or borrow money from them. 
But why do they always have daughters, and just 
two of them: one beautiful, fashionable, and de- 
voted to the piano; the other willing to work, but 
pale, pathetic, and incapable of the smallest 
achievement with the gridiron or the wash-board? 
It's a thing to make a person want to pay up and 
leave, even if he's reading law. If Wallace, here, 
had the spirit of a man, he would collect the 
money owing him, and — " 

"Oh, stop it, Blakeley!" Wallace stormed. "I 
should think you'd get tired of your talk yourself." 

"Well, as you insist — " 

Blakeley began again, but Briggs jumped to his 
feet and caught up Phillips's carpet-bag, and 
looked wildly around. "It's gravel, this time." 

"Well, take your hat, Briggs. It may be a 
prolonged struggle. But remember that Phillips's 
cause is just. He's paid his board, and he has a 
perfect right to leave. She has no right to prevent 
him. Think of that when the fray is at its worst. 
But try to get him off quietly, if you can. Deal 
gently with the erring, while you stand firm for 
boarders' rights. Remember that Phillips is 

132 



THE BOARDERS 

sneaking off in order to spare her feelings and has 
come pretty near prevarication in the effort. 
Have you got your shoes off? No; it's your rub- 
bers on. That's better.' ' 

Briggs faltered with the carpet-bag in his hand. 
"Boys, I don't like this. It feels — clandestine." 

"It looks that way, too," Blakeley admitted. 
"It has an air of conspiracy." 

"I've got half a mind to let Phillips come in 
and get his bag himself." 

"It would serve him right, though I don't know 
why, exactly. He has a right to spare his own 
feelings if he's sparing hers at the same time. Of 
course he's afraid she'll plead with him to stay, 
and he'll have to be inexorable with her; and if 
I understand the yielding nature of Phillips he 
doesn't like to be inexorable." 

There came another sharp rattle of small pebbles 
at the window. 

"Oh, confound him!" Briggs cried under his 
breath, and he shuffled out of the room and crept 
noiselessly down the stairs to the front door. 
The door creaked a little in opening, and he left 
it ajar. The current of cold air that swept up 
to the companions he had left behind at his room 
door brought them the noise of his rush down 
the gravel walk to the gate and a noise there as 
of fugitive steps on the pavement outside. 

i33 



THE BOARDERS 

A weak female tread made itself heard in the 
hallway, followed by a sharp voice from a door 
in the rear. "Was it the cat, Jenny?" 

"No; the door just seems to have blown open. 
The catch is broken/ ' 

Swift, strong steps advanced with an effect of 
angry suspicion. "I don't believe it blew open. 
More likely the cat clawed it open." 

The steps which the voice preceded seemed to 
halt at the open door, as if falling back from it, 
and Wallace and Blakeley, looking down, saw by 
the dim flare of the hall lamp the face of Briggs 
confronting the face of Mrs. Betterson from the 
outer darkness. They saw the sick girl, whose 
pallor they could not see, supporting herself by 
the stairs-post with one hand and pressing the 
other to her side. 

"Oh! It's you, Mr. Briggs," the landlady said, 
with a note of inculpation. "What made you 
leave the door open?" 

The spectators could not see the swift change 
in Briggs's face from terror to savage desperation, 
but they noted it in his voice. "Yes — yes! It's 
me. I just — I was just — No I won't, either! 
You'd better know the truth. I was taking 
Phillips's bag out to him. He was afraid to come 
in for it, because he didn't want to see you, the 
confounded coward! He's left." 

i34 



THE BOARDERS 

"Left? And he said he would stay till spring! 
Didn't he, Jenny?" 

"I don't remember — " the girl weakly gasped; 
but her mother did not heed her in her mounting 
wrath. 

"A great preacher he'll make. What 'd he say 
he left for?" 

"He didn't say. Will you let me up-stairs?" 

"No, I won't, till you tell me. You know well 
enough, between you." 

"Yes, I do know," Briggs answered, savagely. 
"He left because he was tired of eating sole- 
leather for steak, and fire-salt pork, and tar for 
molasses, and butter strong enough to make your 
nose curl, and drinking burnt-rye slops for coffee 
and tea-grounds for tea. And so am I, and so are 
all of us, and — and — Will you let me go up- 
stairs now, Mrs. Betterson?" 

His voice had risen, not so high but that an- 
other voice from the parlor could prevail over it : 
a false, silly, girl voice, with the twitter of piano- 
keys as from hands swept over the whole board 
to help drown the noise of the quarrel in the hall. 
"Oh yes, I'll sing it again, Mr. Saunders, if you 
sa-a-a-y." 

Then this voice lifted itself in a silly song, and 
a silence followed the voices in the hall, except for 
the landlady's saying, brokenly: "Well, all right, 

i3S 



THE BOARDERS 

Mr. Briggs.. You can go up to your room for all 
me. IVe tried to be a mother to you boys, but 
if this is what I get for it!" 

The two at the threshold of Briggs's room re- 
treated within, as he bounded furiously upon 
them and slammed the door after him. It started 
open again, from the chronic defect of the catch, 
but he did not care. 

"Well, Briggs, I hope you feel better now," 
Blakeley began. "You certainly told her the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 
But I wonder you had the heart to do it before 
that sick girl." 

"I didn't have the heart," Briggs shouted. 
"But I had the courage, and if you say one word 
more, Blakeley, 111 throw you out of the room. 
I'm going to leave! My board's paid if yours 
isn't." 

He went wildly about, catching things down 
here and there from nails and out of drawers. 
The tears stood in his eyes. But suddenly he 
stopped and listened to the sounds from below — 
the sound of the silly singing in the parlor, and 
the sound of sobbing in the dining-room, and the 
sound of vain entreating between the sobs. 

"Oh, I don't suppose I'm fit to keep a boarding- 
house. I never was a good manager; and every- 
body imposes on me, and everything is so dear, 

136 



THE BOARDERS 

and I don't know what's good from what's bad. 
Your poor father used to look after all that." 

"Well, don't you cry, now, mother! It '11 all 
come right, you'll see. I'm getting so I can go 
and do the marketing now; and if Minervy would 
only help a little — " 

"No, no!" the mother's voice came anxiously 
up. "We can get along without her; we always 
have. I know he likes her, and I want to give 
her every chance. We can get along. If she was 
on'y married, once, we could all live — " A note 
of self-comforting gradually stole into the mother's 
voice, and the sound of a nose violently blown 
seemed to note a period in her suffering. 

"Oh, mother, I wish I was well!" The girl's 
voice came with a burst of wild lamenting. 

"'Sh, 'sh, deary!" her mother entreated. "He'll 
hear you, and then — " 

"'Hazel Dell'?" the silly voice came from the 
parlor, with a sound of fright in it. "I can sing 
it without the music." The piano keys twittered 
the prelude and the voice sang: 

"In the Hazel Dell my Nelly's sleeping, 
Nelly loved so long ! "' 

Wallace went forward and shut the door. "It's 
a shame to overhear them! What are you going 
to do, you fellows?" 

i37 



THE BOARDERS 

" I'm going to stay," Briggs said, " if it kills 
me. At least I will till Minervy's married. I 
don't care what the grub's like. I can always 
get a bite at the restaurant.' ' 

"If anybody will pay up my back board, I'll 
stay, too/' Blakeley followed. "I should like to 
make a virtue of it, and, as things stand, I can't." 

"All right," Wallace said, and he went out and 
down the stairs. Then from the dining-room be- 
low his heavy voice offering encouragement came 
up, in terms which the others could not make out. 

"I'll bet he's making her another advance," 
Blakeley whispered, as if he might be overheard 
by Wallace. 

"I wish I could have made to do it," Briggs 
whispered back. "I feel as mean as pursley. 
Would you like to kick me?" 

"I don't see how that would do any good. I 
may want to borrow money of you, and you can't 
ask a loan from a man you've kicked. Besides, 
I think what you said may do her good." 



BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 



IX 

BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 

i 

DREAKFAST is my best meal, and I reckon 
*~* it's always been 

Ever since I was old enough to know what break- 
fast could mean. 
I mind when we lived in the cabin out on the 

Illinoy, 
Where father had took up a quarter-section when 

I was a boy, 
I used to go for the cows as soon as it was 

light; 
And when I started back home, before I come 

in sight, 
I come in smell of the cabin, where mother was 

frying the ham, 
And boiling the coffee, that reached through the 

air like a mile o' ba'm, 
141 



BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 

'N' I bet you I didn't wait to see what it was 

that the dog 
Thought he'd got under the stump or inside o' 

the hollow log! 
But I made the old cows canter till their hoof- 
joints cracked — you know 
That dry, funny kind of a noise that the cows 

make when they go — 
And I never stopped to wash when I got to the 

cabin door; 
I pulled up my chair and e't like I never had e't 

before. 
And mother she set there and watched me eat, 

and eat, and eat, 
Like as if she couldn't give her old eyes enough 

of the treat; 
And she split the shortened biscuit, and spread 

the butter between, 
And let it lay there and melt, and soak and soak 

itself in; 
And she piled up my plate with potato and ham 

and eggs, 
Till I couldn't hold any more, or hardly stand 

on my legs; 
And she filled me up with coffee that would float 

an iron wedge, 
And never give way a mite, or spill a drop at 

the edge. 

142 



BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 

ii 

What? Well, yes, this is good coffee, too. If 

they don't know much, 
They do know how to make coffee, I will say 

that for these Dutch. 
But my — oh, my! It ain't the kind of coffee my 

mother made, 
And the coffee my wife used to make would throw 

it clear in the shade; 
And the brand of sugar -cured, canvased ham 

that she always used — 
Well, this Westphalia stuff would simply have 

made her amused! 
That so, heigh? I saw that you was United 

States as soon 
As ever I heard you talk; I reckon I know the 

tune! 
Pick it out anywhere; and you understand how 

I feel 
About these here foreign breakfasts: breakfast is 

my best meal. 

in 

My! but my wife was a cook; and the break- 
fasts she used to get 
The first years we was married, I can smell 'em 

and taste 'em yet: 

i43 



BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 

Corn cake light as a feather, and buckwheat thin 

as lace 
And crisp as crackling and steak that you 

couldn't have the face 
To compare any steak over here to; and chicken 

fried 
Maryland style — I couldn't get through the bill 

if I tried. 
And then, her waffles! My! She'd kind of slip 

in a few 
Between the ham and the chicken — you know how 

women '11 do — 
For a sort of little surprise, and, if I was running 

light, 
To take my fancy and give an edge to my appetite. 
Done it all herself as long as we was poor, and 

I tell you 
She liked to see me eat as well as mother used to do ; 
I reckon she went ahead of mother some, if the 

truth was known, 
And everything she touched she give a taste of 

her own. 

IV 

She was a cook, I can tell you! And after we 

got ahead, 
And she could 'a' had a girl to do the cookin* 

instead, 

144 



BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 

I had the greatest time to get Momma to leave 

the work; 
She said it made her feel like a mis'able sneak 

and shirk. 
She didn't want daughter, though, when we did 

begin to keep girls, 
To come in the kitchen and cook, and smell up 

her clo'es and curls; 
But you couldn't have stopped the child, what- 
ever you tried to do — 
I reckon the gift of the cookin' was born in Girly, 

too. 
Cook she would from the first, and we just had 

to let her alone; 
And after she got married, and had a house of 

her own, 
She tried to make me feel, when I come to live 

with her, 
Like it was my house, too; and I tell you she 

done it, sir! 
She remembered that breakfast was my best 

meal, and she tried 
To have all I used to have, and a good deal more 

beside ; 
Grape-fruit to begin with, or melons or peaches, 

at least — 
Husband's business took him there, and they had 

went to live East — 
io i4S 



BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 

Then a Spanish macker'l, or a soft-shell crab on 

toast, 
Or a broiled live lobster ! Well, sir, I don't want 

to seem to boast, 
But I don't believe you could have got in the 

whole of New York 
Any such an oyster fry or sausage of country 

pork. 



Well, I don't know what-all it means; I always 

lived just so — 
Never drinked or smoked, and yet, here about 

two years ago, 
I begun to run down ; I ain't as young as I used to be ; 
And the doctors all said Carlsbad, and I reckon 

this is me. 
But it's more like some one I've dreamt of, with 

all three of 'em gone! 
Believe in ghosts? Well, I do. I know there 

are ghosts. I'm one. 
Maybe I mayn't look it — I was always inclined 

to fat; 
The doctors say that's the trouble, and very 

likely it's that. 
This is my little grandson, and this is the oldest one 
Of Girly's girls; and for all that the whole of 

us said and done, 

146 



BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL 

She must come with grandpa when the doctors 

sent me off here, 
To see that they didn't starve him. Ain't that 

about so, my dear? 
She can cook, I tell you; and when we get home 

again 
We're goin' to have something to eat; I'm just 

a-livin' till then. 
But when I set here of a morning, and think of 

them that's gone — 
Mother and Momma and Girly — well, I wouldn't 

like to let on 
Before the children, but I can almost seem to 

see 
All of 'em lookin' down, like as if they pitied me, 
After the breakfasts they give me, to have me 

have to put up 
With nothing but bread and butter, and a little 

mis'able cup 
Of this here weak-kneed coffee! I can't tell how 

you feel, 
But it fairly makes me sick ! Breakfast is my 

best meal. 



THE MOTHER-BIRD 



X 

THE MOTHER-BIRD 

CHE wore around the turned-up brim of her 
^ bolero-like toque a band of violets not so 
much in keeping with the gray of the austere 
November day as with the blue of her faded 
autumnal eyes. Her eyes were autumnal, but it 
was not from this, or from the lines of maturity 
graven on the passing prettiness of her little face, 
that the notion and the name of Mother-Bird 
suggested itself. She became known as the 
Mother-Bird to the tender ironic fancy of the 
earliest, if not the latest, of her friends, because 
she was slight and small, and like a bird in her 
eager movements, and because she spoke so in- 
stantly and so constantly of her children in Dres- 
den: before you knew anything else of her you 
knew that she was going out to them. 

She was quite alone, and she gave the sense 
of claiming their protection, and sheltering her- 
self in the fact of them. When she mentioned her 

151 



THE MOTHER-BIRD 

daughters she had the effect of feeling herself 
chaperoned by them. You could not go behind 
them and find her wanting in the social guarantees 
which women on steamers, if not men, exact of 
lonely birds of passage who are not mother-birds. 
One must respect the convention by which she 
safeguarded herself and tried to make good her 
standing ; yet it did not lastingly avail her with 
other birds of passage, so far as they were 
themselves mother-birds, or sometimes only maid- 
en-birds. The day had not ended before they 
began to hold her off by slight liftings of their 
wings and rufflings of their feathers, by quick, 
evasive flutterings, by subtle ignorances of her 
approach, which convinced no one but themselves 
that they had not seen her. She sailed with the 
sort of acquaintance-in-common which every one 
shares on a ship leaving port, when people are 
confused by the kindness of friends coming to 
see them off after sending baskets of fruit and 
sheaves of flowers, and scarcely know what they are 
doing or saying. But when the ship was abreast 
of Fire Island, and the pilot had gone over the 
side, these provisional intimacies of the parting 
hour began to restrict themselves. Then the 
Mother-Bird did not know half the women she 
had known at the pier, or quite all the men. 
It was not that she did anything obvious to 
152 



THE MOTHER-BIRD 

forfeit this knowledge. Her behavior was if any- 
thing too exemplary; it might be thought to form 
a reproach to others. Perhaps it was the unsea- 
sonable band of violets around her hat-brim; 
perhaps it was the vernal gaiety of her dress; 
perhaps it was the uncertainty of her anxious eyes, 
which presumed while they implored. A mother- 
bird must not hover too confidently, too appeal- 
ingly, near coveys whose preoccupations she does 
not share. It might have been her looking and 
dressing younger than nature justified; at forty 
one must not look thirty; in November one must 
not, even involuntarily, wear the things of May 
if one would have others believe in one's devotion 
to one's children in Dresden; one alleges in vain 
one's impatience to join them as grounds for 
joining groups or detached persons who have 
begun to write home to their children in New 
York or Boston. 

The very readiness of the Mother-Bird to give 
security by the mention of well-known names, to 
offer proof of her social solvency by the eager cor- 
rectness of her behavior, created reluctance around 
her. Some would not have her at all from the 
first; others, who had partially or conditionally 
accepted her, returned her upon her hands and 
withdrew from the negotiation. More and more 
she found herself outside that hard woman- 

iS3 



THE MOTHER-BIRD 

world, and trying less and less to beat her way 
into it. 

The women may have known her better even 
than she knew herself, and it may have been 
through ignorance greater than her own that the 
men were more acquiescent. But the men too 
were not so acquiescent, or not at all, as time 
passed. 

It would be hard to fix the day, the hour, far 
harder the moment, when the Mother-Bird began 
to disappear from the drawing-room and to ap- 
pear in the smoking-room, or say whether she 
passed from the one to the other in a voluntary 
exile or by the rigor of the women's unwritten 
law. Still, from time to time she was seen in 
their part of the ship, after she was also seen 
where the band of violets showed strange and sad 
through veils of smoke that were not dense enough 
to hide her poor, pretty little face, with its faded 
blue eyes and wistful mouth. There she passed 
by quick transition from the conversation of the 
graver elderly smokers to the loud laughter of 
two birds of prey who became her comrades, or 
such friends as birds like them can be to birds 
like her. 

From anything she had said or done there was 
no reason for her lapse from the women and the 
better men to such men; for her transition from 

i54 



THE MOTHER-BIRD 

the better sort of women there was no reason ex- 
cept that it happened. Whether she attached 
herself to the birds of prey, or they to her, by 
that instinct which enables birds of all kinds to 
know themselves of a feather remained a touch- 
ing question. 

There remained to the end the question whether 
she was of a feather with them, or whether it was 
by some mischance, or by some such stress of the 
elements as drives birds of any feather to flock 
with birds of any other. To the end there re- 
mained a distracted and forsaken innocence in 
her looks. It was imaginable that she had made 
overtures to the birds of prey because she had 
made overtures to every one else; she was always 
seeking rather than sought, and her acceptance 
with them was as deplorable as her refusal by 
better birds. Often they were seen without her, 
when they had that look of having escaped, which 
others wore; but she was not often seen without 
them. 

There is not much walking-weather on a No- 
vember passage, and she was seen less with them 
in the early dark outdoors than in the late light 
within, by which she wavered a small form through 
the haze of their cigars in the smoking-room, or 
in the grill-room, where she showed in faint eclipse 
through the fumes of the broiling and frying, or 

i55 



THE MOTHER-BIRD 

through the vapors of the hot whiskies. The 
birds of prey were then heard laughing, but 
whether at her or with her it must have been 
equally sorrowful to learn. 

Perhaps they were laughing at the maternal 
fondness which she had used for introduction to 
the general acquaintance lost almost in the mo- 
ment of winning it. She seemed not to resent 
their laughter, though she seemed not to join 
in it. The worst of her was the company she kept ; 
but since no better would allow her to keep it, 
you could not confidently say she would not have 
liked the best company on board. At the same 
time you could not have said she would ; you could 
not have been sure it would not have bored her. 
Doubtless these results are not solely the sport 
of chance; they must be somewhat the event 
of choice if not of desert. 

For anything you could have sworn, the Mother- 
Bird would have liked to be as good as the best. 
But since it was not possible for her to be good 
in the society of the best, she could only be good 
in that of the worst. It was to be hoped that the 
birds of prey were not cruel to her; that their 
mockery was never unkind if ever it was mockery. 
The cruelty which must come came when they 
began to be seen less and less with her, even at 
the late suppers, through the haze of their cigars 

156 



THE MOTHER-BIRD 

and the smoke of the broiling and frying, and the 
vapors of the hot whiskies. Then it was the 
sharpest pang of all to meet her wandering up 
and down the ship's promenades, or leaning on 
the rail and looking dimly out over the foam- 
whitened black sea. It is the necessity of birds 
of prey to get rid of other birds when they are 
tired of them, and it had doubtless come to that. 
One night, the night before getting into port, 
when the curiosity which always followed her 
with grief failed of her in the heightened hilarity 
of the smoking-room, where the last bets on the 
ship's run were making, it found her alone beside 
a little iron table, of those set in certain nooks 
outside the grill-room. There she sat with no one 
near, where the light from within fell palely upon 
her. The boon birds of prey, with whom she had 
been supping, had abandoned her, and she was 
supporting her cheek on the small hand of the 
arm that rested on the table. She leaned for- 
ward, and swayed with the swaying ship; the 
violets in her bolero-toque quivered with the vi- 
brations of the machinery. She was asleep, poor 
Mother-Bird, and it would have been impossible 
not to wish her dreams were kind. 



THE AMIGO 



XI 
THE AMIGO 

TTIS name was really Perez Armando Aldeano, 
* * but in the end everybody called him the 
amigOy because that was the endearing term by 
which he saluted all the world. There was a 
time when the children called him " Span-yard' - 
in their games, for he spoke no tongue but Span- 
ish, and though he came from Ecuador, and was 
no more a Spaniard than they were English, he 
answered to the call of " Span-yard !" whenever 
he heard it. He came eagerly in the hope of fun, 
and all the more eagerly if there was a hope of 
mischief in the fun. Still, to discerning spirits, 
he was always the amigo, for, when he hailed you 
so, you could not help hailing him so again, and 
whatever mock he put upon you afterward, you 
were his secret and inalienable friend. 

The moment of my own acceptance in this 
quality came in the first hours of expansion fol- 
lowing our getting to sea after long detention in 

ii 161 



THE AMIGO 

the dock by fog. A small figure came flying 
down the dock with outspread arms, and a joy- 
ful cry of "Ah, amigol" as if we were now meeting 
unexpectedly after a former intimacy in Bogota; 
and the amigo clasped me round the middle to 
his bosom, or more strictly speaking, his brow, 
which he plunged into my waistcoat. He was 
clad in a long black overcoat, and a boy's knee- 
pants, and under the peak of his cap twinkled 
the merriest black eyes that ever lighted up a 
smiling face of olive hue. Thereafter, he was 
more and more, with the thinness of his small 
black legs, and his habit of hopping up and down, 
and dancing threateningly about, with mischief 
latent in every motion, like a crow which in being 
tamed has acquired one of the worst traits of 
civilization. He began babbling and gurgling in 
Spanish, and took my hand for a stroll about the 
ship, and from that time we were, with certain 
crises of disaffection, firm allies. 

There were others whom he hailed and adopted 
his friends, whose legs he clung about and im- 
peded in their walks, or whom he required to toss 
him into the air as they passed, but I flattered 
myself that he had a peculiar, because a primary, 
esteem for myself. I have thought it might be 
that, Bogota being said to be a very literary 
capital, as those things go in South America, he 

162 



THE AMIGO 

was mystically aware of a common ground be- 
tween us, wider and deeper than that of his other 
friendships. But it may have been somewhat 
owing to my inviting him to my cabin to choose 
such portion as he would of a lady-cake sent us 
on shipboard at the last hour. He prattled and 
chuckled over it in the soft gutturals of his parrot- 
like Spanish, and rushed up on deck to eat the 
frosting off in the presence of his small com- 
panions, and to exult before them in the exploita- 
tion of a novel pleasure. Yet it could not have 
been the lady-cake which lastingly endeared me 
to him, for by the next day he had learned pru- 
dence and refused it without withdrawing his 
amity. 

This, indeed, was always tempered by what 
seemed a constitutional irony, and he did not 
impart it to any one without some time making 
his friend feel the edge of his practical humor. 
It was not long before the children whom he gath- 
ered to his heart had each and all suffered some 
fall or bump or bruise which, if not of his inten- 
tion, was of his infliction, and which was regretted 
with such winning archness that the very mothers 
of them could not resist him, and his victims dried 
their tears to follow him with glad cries of " Span- 
yard, Span-yard !" Injury at his hands was a 
favor; neglect was the only real grievance. He 

163 



THE AMIGO 

went about rolling his small black head, and dart- 
ing roguish lightnings from under his thick-fringed 
eyes, and making more trouble with a more en- 
ticing gaiety than all the other people on the 
ship put together. 

The truth must be owned that the time came, 
long before the end of the voyage, when it was 
felt that in the interest of the common welfare, 
something must be done about the amigo. At the 
conversational end of the doctor's table, where he 
was discussed whenever the racks were not on, 
and the talk might have languished without their 
inspiration, his badness was debated at every 
meal. Some declared him the worst boy in the 
world, and held against his half-hearted defenders 
that something ought to be done about him; and 
one was left to imagine all the darker fate for him 
because there was nothing specific in these con- 
victions. He could not be thrown overboard, 
and if he had been put in irons probably his worst 
enemies at the conversational end of the table 
would have been the first to intercede for him. 
It is not certain, however, that their prayers 
would have been effective with the captain, if 
that officer, framed for comfort as well as com- 
mand, could have known how accurately the 
amigo had dramatized his personal presence by 
throwing himself back, and clasping his hands a 

164 



THE AMIGO 

foot in front of his small stomach, and making a 
few tilting paces forward. 

The amigo had a mimic gift which he liked to 
exercise when he could find no intelligible language 
for the expression of his ironic spirit. Being for- 
bidden visits in and out of season to certain state- 
rooms whose inmates feigned a wish to sleep, he 
represented in what grotesque attitudes of sono- 
rous slumber they passed their day, and he spared 
neither age nor sex in these graphic shows. When 
age refused one day to go up on deck with him 
and pleaded in such Spanish as it could pluck 
up from its past studies that it was too old, he 
laughed it to scorn. "You are not old," he said. 
"Why?" the flattered dotard inquired. "Be- 
cause you smile," and that seemed reason enough 
for one's continued youth. It was then that the 
amigo gave his own age, carefully telling the Span- 
ish numerals over, and explaining further by 
holding up both hands with one finger shut in. 
But he had the subtlety of centuries in his nine 
years, and he penetrated the ship everywhere 
with his arch spirit of mischief. It was mischief 
always in the interest of the good-fellowship which 
he offered impartially to old and young; and if 
it were mere frolic, with no ulterior object, he did 
not care at all how old or young his playmate was. 
This endeared him naturally to every age; and 

165 



THE AMIGO 

the little blond German-American boy dried his 
tears from the last accident inflicted on him by 
the amigo to recall him by tender entreaties of 
"Span-yard, Span-yard!" while the eldest of his 
friends could not hold out against him more than 
two days in the strained relations following upon 
the amigo' s sweeping him down the back with a 
toy broom employed by the German-American 
boy to scrub the scuppers. This was not so 
much an injury as an indignity, but it was resented 
as an indignity, in spite of many demure glances 
of propitiation from the amigo' s ironical eyes and 
murmurs of inarticulate apology as he passed. 

He was, up to a certain point, the kindest and 
truest of amigos; then his weird seizure came, and 
the baby was spilled out of the carriage he had 
been so benevolently pushing up and down; or 
the second officer's legs, as he walked past with 
the prettiest girl on board, were hit with the stick 
that the amigo had been innocently playing shuffle- 
board with; or some passenger was taken un- 
awares in his vanity or infirmity and made to 
contribute to the amigo 's passion for active amuse- 
ment. 

At this point I ought to explain that the amigo 
was not traveling alone from Ecuador to Paris, 
where it was said he was to rejoin his father. 
At meal-times, and at other rare intervals, he was 

166 



THE AMIGO 

seen to be in the charge of a very dark and very 
silent little man, with intensely black eyes and 
mustache, clad in raven hues from his head to the 
delicate feet on which he wore patent-leather 
shoes. With him the amigo walked gravely up 
and down the deck, and behaved decorously at 
table; and we could not reconcile the apparent 
affection between the two with a theory we had 
that the amigo had been found impossible in his 
own country, and had been sent out of Ecuador 
by a decree of the government, or perhaps a vote 
of the whole people. The little, dark, silent man, 
in his patent-leather boots, had not the air of 
conveying a state prisoner into exile, and we 
wondered in vain what the tie between him 
and the amigo was. He might have been his 
tutor, or his uncle. He exercised a quite mystical 
control over the amigo, who was exactly obedient 
to him in everything, and would not look aside 
at you when in his keeping. We reflected with 
awe and pathos that, as they roomed together, it 
was his privilege to see the amigo asleep, when 
that little, very kissable black head rested inno- 
cently on the pillow, and the busy brain within it 
was at peace with the world which formed its 
pleasure and its prey in waking. 

It would be idle to represent that the amigo 
played his pranks upon that shipload of long- 

167 



THE AMIGO 

suffering people with final impunity. The time 
came when they not only said something must 
be done, but actually did something. It was 
by the hand of one of the amigo' s sweetest and 
kindest friends, namely, that elderly captain, off 
duty, who was going out to be assigned his ship 
in Hamburg. From the first he had shown the 
affectionate tenderness for the amigo which was 
felt by all except some obdurate hearts at the 
conversational end of the table; and it must 
have been with a loving interest in the amigo 9 s 
ultimate well-being that, taking him in an ecstasy 
of mischief, he drew the amigo face downward 
across his knees, and bestowed the chastisement 
which was morally a caress. He dismissed him 
with a smile in which the amigo read the good 
understanding that existed unimpaired between 
them, and accepted his correction with the same 
affection as that which had given it. He shook 
himself and ran off with an enjoyment of the joke 
as great as that of any of the spectators and far 
more generous. 

In fact there was nothing mean in the amigo. 
Impish he was, or might be, but only in the sort 
of the crow or the parrot; there was no malevo- 
lence in his fine malice. One fancied him in his 
adolescence taking part in one of the frequent 
revolutions of his continent, but humorously, not 

168 



THE AMIGO 

homicidally. He would like to alarm the other 
faction, and perhaps drive it from power, or over- 
set it from its official place, but if he had the say 
there would be no bringing the vanquished out 
into the plaza to be shot. He may now have 
been on his way to France ultimately to study 
medicine, which seems to be preliminary to a 
high political career in South America ; but in the 
mean time we feared for him in that republic of 
severely regulated subordinations. 

We thought with pathos of our early parting 
with him, as we approached Plymouth and tried 
to be kodaked with him, considering it an honor 
and pleasure. He so far shared our feeling as 
to consent, but he insisted on wearing a pair of 
glasses which had large eyes painted on them, 
and on being taken in the act of inflating a toy 
balloon. Probably, therefore, the likeness would 
not be recognized in Bogota, but it will always 
be endeared to us by the memory of the many 
mockeries suffered from him. There were other 
friends whom we left on the ship, notably those 
of the conversational end of the table, who thought 
him simply a bad boy; but there were none of 
such peculiar appeal as he, when he stood by the 
guard, opening and shutting his hand in ironical 
adieu, and looking smaller and smaller as our 
tender drifted away and the vast liner loomed 

169 



THE AMIGO 

immense before us. He may have contributed 
to its effect of immensity by the smallness of his 
presence, or it may have dwarfed him. No mat- 
ter; he filled no slight space in our lives while 
he lasted. Now that he is no longer there, was 
he really a bad little boy, merely and simply? 
Heaven knows, which alone knows good boys 
from bad. 



BLACK CROSS FARM 



XII 

BLACK CROSS FARM 

(To F. S.) 

AFTER full many a mutual delay 
** My friend and I at last fixed on a day 
For seeing Black Cross Farm, which he had long 
Boasted the fittest theme for tale or song 
In all that charming region round about: 
Something that must not really be left out 
Of the account of things to do for me. 
It was a teasing bit of mystery, 
He said, which he and his had tried in vain, 
Ever since they had found it, to explain. 
The right way was to happen, as they did, 
Upon it in the hills where it was hid; 
But chance could not be always trusted, quite, 
You might not happen on it, though you might; 
Encores were usually objected to 
By chance. The next best thing that we could do 
Was in his carryall, to start together, 
And trust that somehow favoring wind and 
weather, 

*73 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

With the eccentric progress of his horse, 
Would so far drift us from our settled course 
That we at least could lose ourselves, if not 
Find the mysterious object that we sought. 
So one blithe morning of the ripe July 
We fared, by easy stages, toward the sky 
That rested one rim of its turquoise cup 
Low on the distant sea, and, tilted up, 
The other on the irregular hilltops. Sweet 
The sun and wind that joined to cool and heat 
The air to one delicious temperature; 
And over the smooth-cropt mowing-pieces pure 
The pine-breath, borrowing their spicy scent 
In barter for the balsam that it lent! 
And when my friend handed the reins to me, 
And drew a fuming match along his knee, 
And, lighting his cigar, began to talk, 
I let the old horse lapse into a walk 
From his perfunctory trot, content to listen, 
Amid that leafy rustle and that glisten 
Of field, and wood, and ocean, rapt afar, 
From every trouble of our anxious star. 
From time to time, between effect and cause 
In this or that, making a questioning pause, 
My friend peered round him while he feigned a gay 
Hope that we might have taken the wrong way 
At the last turn, and then let me push on, 
Or the old horse rather, slanting hither and yon, 

174 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

And never in the middle of the track, 
Except when slanting off or slanting back. 
He talked, I listened, while we wandered by 
The scanty fields of wheat and oats and rye, 
With patches of potatoes and of corn, 
And now and then a garden spot forlorn, 
Run wild where once a house had stood, or where 
An empty house yet stood, and seemed to stare 
Upon us blindly from the twisted glass 
Of windows that once let no wayfarer pass 
Unseen of children dancing at the pane, 
And vanishing to reappear again, 
Pulling their mother with them to the sight. 
Still we kept on, with turnings left and right, 
Past farmsteads grouped in cheerful neighbor- 
hoods, 
Or solitary; then through shadowy woods 
Of pine or birch, until the road, grass-grown, 
Had given back to Nature all her own 
Save a faint wheel-trace, that along the slope, 
Rain-gullied, seemed to stop and doubt and 

grope, 
And then quite ceased, as if 't had turned and fled 
Out of the forest into which it led, 
And left us at the gate whose every bar 
Was nailed against us. But, "Oh, here we are!" 
My friend cried joyously. "At last, at last!" 
And making our horse superfluously fast, 

i7S 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

He led the way onward by what had been 
A lane, now hid by weeds and briers between 
Meadows scarce worth the mowing, to a space 
Shaped as by Nature for the dwelling-place 
Of kindly human life: a small plateau 
Open to the heaven that seemed bending low 
In liking for it. There beneath a roof 
Still against winter and summer weather-proof, 
With walls and doors and windows perfect yet, 
Between its garden and its graveyard set, 
Stood the old homestead, out of which had 

perished 
The home whose memory it dumbly cherished, 
And which, when at our push the door swung wide, 
We might have well imagined to have died 
And had its funeral the day before: 
So clean and cold it was from floor to floor, 
So lifelike and so deathlike, with the thrill 
Of hours when life and death encountered still 
Passionate in it. They that lay below 
The tangled grasses or the drifted snow, 
Husband and wife, mother and little one, 
From that sad house less utterly were gone 
Than they that living had abandoned it. 
In moonless nights their Absences might flit, 
Homesick, from room to room, or dimly sit 
Around its fireless hearths, or haunt the rose 
And lily in the neglected garden close; 

176 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

But they whose feet had borne them from the 

door 
Would pass the footworn threshold nevermore. 
We read the moss-grown names upon the tombs, 
With lighter melancholy than the glooms 
Of the dead house shadowed us with, and thence 
Turning, my heart was pierced with more intense 
Suggestion of a mystical dismay, 
As in the brilliance of the summer day 
We faced the vast gray barn. The house was old, 
Though so well kept, as age by years is told 
In our young land; but the barn, gray and vast, 
Stood new and straight and strong — all bat- 
tened fast 
At every opening; and where once the mow 
Had yawned wide-windowed, on the sheathing 

now 
A Cross was nailed, the bigness of a man, 
Aslant from left to right, athwart the span, 
And painted black as paint could make it. 

Hushed, 
I stood, while manifold conjecture rushed 
To this point and to that point, and then burst 
In the impotent questionings rejected first. 
What did it mean? Ah, that no one could tell. 
Who put it there? That was unknown as well. 
Was there no legend? My friend knew of none. 
No neighborhood story? He had sought for one 

12 177 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

In vain. Did he imagine it accident, 
With nothing really implied or meant 
By the boards set in that way? It might be, 
But I could answer that as well as he. 
Then (desperately) what did he guess it was: 
Something of purpose, or without a cause 
Other than chance? He slowly shook his head, 
And with his gaze fixed on the symbol said: 
"We have quite ceased from guessing or sur- 
mising, 
For all our several and joint devising 
Has left us finally where I must leave you. 
But now I think it is your part to do 
Yourself some guessing. I hoped you might bring 
A fresh mind to the riddle's unraveling. 
Come!" 

And thus challenged I could not deny 
The sort of right he had to have me try; 
And yielding, I began — instinctively 
Proceeding by exclusion: "We agree 
It was not put there as a pious charm 
To keep the abandoned property from harm? 
The owner could have been no Catholic; 
And yet it was no sacrilegious trick 
To make folks wonder; and it was not chance 
Assuredly that set those boards askance 
In that shape, or before or after, so 
Painted them to that coloring of woe. 

178 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

Do you suppose, then, that it could have been 
Some secret sorrow or some secret sin, 
That tried to utter or to expiate 
Itself in that way: some unhappy hate 
Turned to remorse, or some life-rending grief 
That could not find in years or tears relief? 
Who lived here last?" 

"Ah," my friend made reply, 
"You know as much concerning that as I. 
All I could tell is what those gravestones tell, 
And they have told it all to you as well. 
The names, the dates, the curious epitaphs 
At whose quaint phrase one either sighs or 

laughs, 
Just as one's heart or head happens to be 
Hollow or not, are there for each to see. 
But I believe they have nothing to reveal: 
No wrong to publish, no shame to conceal." 

"And yet that Cross!" I turned at his reply, 
Fixing the silent symbol with my eye, 
Insistently. "And you consent," I said, 
"To leave the enigma uninterpreted?" 

"Why, no," he faltered, then went on: "Suppose 
That some one that had known the average woes 
Of human nature, finding that the load 
Was overheavy for him on life's road, 
Had wished to leave some token in this Cross, 
Qf what had been his gain and been his loss, 

179 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

Of what had been his suffering and of what 
Had also been the solace of his lot? 
Whoever that unknown brother-man might be, 
I think he must have been like you and me, 
Who bear our Cross, and when we fail at length, 
Bow down and pray to it for greater strength/ ' 

I mused, and as I mused, I seemed to find 
The fancy more and still more to my mind. 

''Well, let it go at that! I think, for me, 
I like that better than some tragedy 
Of clearer physiognomy, which were 
In being more definite the vulgarer. 
For us, what, after all, would be the gain 
Of making the elusive meaning plain? 
I really think, if I were you and yours, 
I would not lift the veil that now obscures 
The appealing fact, lest I should spoil the charm 
Deeding me for my own the Black Cross Farm." 

"A good suggestion! I am glad," said he, 
"We have always practised your philosophy." 

He smiled, we laughed; we sighed and turned 
away, 
And left the mystery to the summer day 
That made as if it understood, and could 
Have read the riddle to us if it would: 
The wide, wise sky, the clouds that on the grass 
Let their vague shadows dreamlike trail and 
pass; 

1 80 



BLACK CROSS FARM 

The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing 
Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing 
Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, 
Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune 
Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, 
Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, 
Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane 
That to our coming feet had been so plain, 
And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, 
And thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath, 
Amidst the wilding loveliness to stray, 
And spend, if need were, looking for the way, 
Whole hours; but blundered into the right course 
Suddenly, and came out upon our horse, 
Where we had left him— to our great surprise, 
Stamping and switching at the pestering flies, 
But not apparently anxious to depart, 
When nearly overturning at the start, 
We followed down that evanescent trace 
Which, followed up, had brought us to the place. 

Then, all the wayside scenes reversing, we 
Dropped to the glimpses of the distant sea, 
Content as if we brought, returning thus, 
The secret of the Black Cross back with us. 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 



XIII 
THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

IT had long been the notion of Frederick Erlcort, 
who held it playfully, held it seriously, accord- 
ing to the company he was in, that there might be 
a censorship of taste and conscience in literary 
matters strictly affiliated with the retail com- 
merce in books. When he first began to propose 
it, playfully, seriously, as his listener chose, he 
said that he had noticed how in the great depart- 
ment stores where nearly everything to supply 
human need was sold, the shopmen and shop- 
women seemed instructed by the ownership or the 
management to deal in absolute good faith with 
the customers, and not to misrepresent the qual- 
ity, the make, or the material of any article in 
the slightest degree. A thing was not to be called 
silk or wool when it was partly cotton ; it was not 
to be said that it would wash when it would not 
wash, or that the color would not come off when 
it would come off, or that the stuff was English 
or French when it was American. 

18S 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

When Erlcort once noted his interest in the fact 
to a floor-walker whom he happened to find at 
leisure, the floor- walker said, Yes, that was so; 
and the house did it because it was business, good 
business, the only good business. He was instant- 
ly enthusiastic, and he said that just in the same 
way, as an extension of its good faith with the 
public, the house had established the rule of taking 
back any article which a customer did not like, 
or did not find what she had supposed when she 
got it home, and refunding the money. This was 
the best sort of business; it held custom; the 
woman became a customer for life. The floor- 
walker laughed, and after he had told an anxious 
applicant, "Second aisle to the left, lady; three 
counters back," he concluded to Erlcort, "I say 
she because a man never brings a thing back when 
he's made a mistake; but a woman can always 
blame it on the house. That so?" 

Erlcort laughed with him, and in going out he 
stopped at the book-counter. Rather it was a 
bookstore, and no small one, with ranks of new 
books covering the large tables and mounting to 
their level from the floor, neatly piled, and with 
shelves of complete editions and soberer-looking 
volumes stretching along the wall as high as the 
ceiling. "Do you happen to have a good book — 
a book that would read good, I mean — in your 

186 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

stock here?" he asked the neat blonde behind the 
literary barricade. 

"Well, here's a book that a good many are 
reading," she answered, with prompt interest and 
a smile that told in the book's favor; it was a 
protectingly filial and guardedly ladylike smile. 

"Yes, but is it a book worth reading — worth the 
money?" 

"Well, I don't know as I'm a judge," the kind 
little blonde replied. She added, daringly, "All 
I can say is, I set up till two last night to finish 
it." 

"And you advise me to buy it?" 

"Well, we're not allowed to do that, exactly. 
I can only tell you what I know." 

"But if I take it, and it isn't what I expected, 
I can return it and get my money back?" 

"That's something I never was asked before. 
Mr. Jeffers! Mr. Jeffers!" she called to a floor- 
walker passing near; and when he stopped and 
came up to the counter, she put the case to him. 

He took the book from Erlcort's hand and 
examined the outside of it curiously if not critically. 
Then he looked from it to Erlcort, and said, "Oh, 
how do you do again ! Well, no, sir; I don't know 
as we could do that. You see, you would have 
to read it to find out that you didn't want it, and 
that would be like using or wearing an article, 

187 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

wouldn't it? We couldn't take back a thing that 
had been used or worn — heigh?" 

"But you might have some means of knowing 
whether a book is good or not?" 

"Well, yes, we might. That's a point we have 
never had raised before. Miss Prittiman, haven't 
we any means of knowing whether a book's some- 
thing we can guarantee or not?" 

"Well, Mr. Jeffers, there's the publisher's 
advertisement." 

"Why, yes, so there is! And a respectable 
publisher wouldn't indorse a book that wasn't the 
genuine article, would he now, sir?" 

"He mightn't," Erlcort said, as if he felt the 
force of the argument. 

"And there are the notices in the newspapers. 
They ought to tell," Miss Prittiman added, more 
convincingly. "I don't know," she said, as from 
a sensitive conscience, "whether there have been 
any about this book yet, but I should think there 
would be." 

"And in the mean time, as you won't guarantee 
the book so that I can bring it back and get my 
money if I find it worthless, I must accept the 
publisher's word?" Erlcort pressed further. 

"I should think you could do that," the floor- 
walker suggested, with the appearance of being 
tired. 

188 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

"Well, I think I will, for once," Erlcort relented. 
"But wait! What does the publisher say?" 

"It's all printed on this slip inside," the blonde 
said, and she showed it as she took the book from 
him. "Shall I send it? Or will you—" 

"No, no, thank you, I'll take it with me. 
Let me — " 

He kept the printed slip and began to read it. 
The blonde wrapped the book up and laid it with 
a half-dollar in change on the counter before Erl- 
cort. The floor- walker went away; Erlcort heard 
him saying, "No, madam; toys on the fifth floor, 
at the extreme rear, left," while he lost himself 
in the glowing promises of the publisher. It ap- 
peared that the book he had just bought was by 
a perfectly new author, an old lady of seventy 
who had never written a novel before, and might 
therefore be trusted for an entire freshness of 
thought and feeling. The plot was of a gripping 
intensity; the characters were painted with large, 
bold strokes, and were of an unexampled virility; 
the story was packed with passion from cover to 
cover; and the reader would be held breathless 
by the author's skill in working from the tragic 
conditions to an all-round happy conclusion. 

From time to time Erlcort heard the gentle 
blonde saying such things as, "Oh yes; it's the 
best-seller, all right," and, "All I can say is I set 

189 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

up till two o'clock in the morning to finish it," 
and, "Yes, ma'am; it's by a new writer; a very 
old lady of seventy who is just beginning to write; 
well, that's what I heard." 

On his way up-town in the Subway he clung to 
the wonted strap, unsupported by anything in the 
romance which he had bought; and yet he could 
not take the book back and get his money, or 
even exchange it for some article of neckwear or 
footwear. In his extremity he thought he would 
try giving it to the trainman just before he reached 
his stop. 

"You want to give it to me? Well, that's some- 
thing that never happened to me on this line be- 
fore. I guess my wife will like it. I — xoogth 
Street! Change for East Brooklyn and the Bronx!" 
the guard shouted, and he let Erlcort out of the 
car, the very first of the tide that spilled itself 
forth at the station. He called after him, " Do 
as much for you some time." 

The incident first amused Erlcort, and then it 
began to trouble him; but he appeased his re- 
morse by toying with his old notion of a critical 
bookstore. His mind was still at play with it 
when he stopped at the bell-pull of an elderly girl 
of his acquaintance who had a studio ten stories 
above, and the habit of giving him afternoon 
tea in it if he called there about five o'clock. She 

190 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

had her ugly painting-apron still on, and her 
thumb through the hole in her palette, when she 
opened her door to him. 

"Too soon?" he asked. 

She answered as well as she could with the 
brush held horizontally in her mouth while she 
glared inhospitably at him. "Well, not much," 
and then she let him in, and went and lighted her 
spirit-lamp. 

He began at once to tell her of his strange ex- 
perience, and went on till she said: "Well, there's 
your tea. I don't know what you've been driv- 
ing at, but I suppose you do. Is it the old thing?" 

"It's my critical bookstore, if that's what you 
call the old thing." 

" Oh ! That! I thought it had failed 'way back 
in the dark ages." 

"The dark ages are not back, please; they're 
all 'round, and you know very well that my critical 
bookstore has never been tried yet. But tell me 
one thing : should you wish to live with a picture, 
even for a few hours, which had been painted by 
an old lady of seventy who had never tried to 
paint before?" 

"If I intended to go crazy, yes. What has all 
that got to do with it?" 

"That's the joint commendation of the publisher 
and the kind little blonde who united to sell me 

191 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

the book I just gave to that poor Subway train- 
man. Do you ever buy a hew book?" 

"No; I always borrow an old one." 

"But if you had to buy a new one, wouldn't you 
like to know of a place where you could be sure 
of getting a good one?" 

"I shouldn't mind. Or, yes, I should, rather. 
Where's it to be?" 

"Oh, I know. I've had my eye on the place 
for a good while. It's a funny old place in Sixth 
Avenue — " 

"Sixth Avenue!" 

"Don't interrupt — where the dearest old codger 
in the world is just going out of the house-furnish- 
ing business in a small way. It's kept getting 
smaller and smaller — I've watched it shrink — till 
now it can't stand up against the big shops, and 
the old codger told me the other day that it was 
no use." 

"Poor fellow!" 

"No. He's not badly off, and he's going back 
up-state where he came from about forty years 
ago, and he can live — or die — very well on what 
he's put by. I've known him rather a good while, 
and we've been friends ever since we've been 
acquainted." 

"Go on," the elderly girl said. 

Erlcort was not stopping, but she spoke so as 
192 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

to close her mouth, which she was apt to let hang 
open in a way that she did not like; she had her in- 
timates pledged to tell her when she was doing it, 
but she could not make a man promise, and she 
had to look after her mouth herself with Erlcort. 
It was not a bad mouth; her eyes were large, and 
it was merely large to match them. 

"When shall you begin — open shop?" she 
asked. 

"My old codger's lease expires in the fall," he 
answered, "but he would be glad to have me take 
it off his hands this spring. I could give the sum- 
mer to changing and decorating, and begin my 
campaign in the fall — the first of October, say. 
Wouldn't you like to come some day and see the 
old place?" 

"I should love it. But you're not supposing 
I shall be of the least use, I hope? I'm not 
decorational, you know. Easel pictures, and small 
ones at that." 

"Of course. But you are a woman, and have 
ideas of the cozy. I mean that the place shall be 
made attractive." 

"Do you think the situation will be — on Sixth 
Avenue?" 

"It will be quaint. It's in a retarded region 
of low buildings, with a carpenter's shop two doors 
off. The L roars overhead and the surface cars 

13 193 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

squeal before, but that is New York, you know, 
and it's very central. Besides, at the back of the 
shop, with the front door shut, it is very quiet." 

The next day the friends lunched together at 
an Italian restaurant very near the place, and 
rather hurried themselves away to the old codger's 
store. 

"He is a dear," Margaret whispered to Erlcort 
in following him about to see the advantages of 
the place. 

"Oh, mine's setting-hen's time," he justified his 
hospitality in finally asking them to take seats 
on a nail-keg apiece. "You mustn't think you're 
interruptin'. Look 'round all ye want to, or set 
down and rest ye." 

"That would be a good motto for your book- 
store," she screamed to Erlcort, when they got 
out into the roar of the avenue, ' 1 1 Look 'round all 
ye want to, or set down and rest ye.' Wasn't he 
sweet? And I don't wonder you're taken with 
the place: it has such capabilities. You might as 
well begin imagining how you will arrange it." 

They were walking involuntarily up the avenue, 
and when they came to the Park they went into 
it, and in the excitement of their planning they 
went as far as the Ramble, where they sat down 
on a bench and disappointed some squirrels who 
supposed they had brought peanuts with them. 

194 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

They decided that the front of the shop should 
be elaborately simple ; perhaps the door should be 
painted black, with a small-paned sash and a 
heavy brass latch. On each side should be a 
small-paned show-window, with books laid inside 
on an inclined shelving; on the door should be 
a modest bronze plate, reading, "The Critical 
Bookstore." They rejected shop as an affectation, 
and they hooted the notion of "Ye Critical 
Bookstore' ' as altogether loathsome. The door 
and window would be in a rather belated taste, 
but the beautiful is never out of date, and black 
paint and small panes might be found rococo in 
their old-fashionedness now. There should be a 
fireplace, or perhaps a Franklin stove, at the rear 
of the room, with a high-shouldered, small-paned 
sash on each side letting in the light from the 
yard of the carpenter-shop. On the chimneypiece 
should be lettered, "Look 'round all ye want to, 
or set down and rest ye." 

The genius of the place should be a refined 
hospitality, such as the gentle old codger had 
practised with them, and to facilitate this there 
should be a pair of high-backed settles, one under 
each window. The book-counter should stretch 
the whole length of the store, and at intervals 
beside it, against the book-shelving, should be set 
old-fashioned chairs, but not too old-fashioned. 

i9S 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

Against the lower book-shelves on a deeper shelf 
might be stood against the books a few sketches in 
water-color, or even oil. 

This was Margaret Green's idea. 

"And would you guarantee the quality?" Erl- 
cort asked. 

"Perhaps they wouldn't be for sale, though if 
any one insisted — " 

"I see. Well, pass the sketches. What else?" 

"Well, a few little figures in plaster, or even 
marble or bronze, very Greek, or very American; 
things in low relief." 

"Pass the little figures and low reliefs. But 
don't forget it's a foofcstore." 

"Oh, I won't. The sketches of all kinds would 
be strictly subordinated to the books. If I had 
a tea-room handy here, with a table and the backs 
of some menus to draw on, I could show you just 
how it would look." 

"What's the matter with the Casino?" 

"Nothing; only it's rather early for tea yet." 

"It isn't for soda-lemonade." 

She set him the example of instantly rising, and 
led the way back along the lake to the Casino, 
resting at that afternoon hour among its spring 
flowers and blossoms innocent of its lurid after- 
dark frequentation. He got some paper from the 
waiter who came to take their order. She began 

196 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

to draw rapidly, and by the time the waiter came 
again she was giving Erlcort the last scrap of 
paper. 

"Well," he said, "I had no idea that I had 
imagined anything so charming! If this critical 
bookstore doesn't succeed, it '11 be because there 
are no critics. But what — what are these little 
things hung against the partitions of the shelves ?" 

"Oh — mirrors. Little round ones." 

"But why mirrors of any shape?" 

"Nothing; only people like to see themselves in 
a glass of any shape. And when," Margaret 
added, in a burst of candor, "a woman looks up 
and sees herself with a book in her hand, she will 
feel so intellectual she will never put it down. 
She will buy it." 

"Margaret Green, this is immoral. Strike out 
those mirrors, or I will smash them every one!" 

"Oh, very well!" she said, and she rubbed them 
out with the top of her pencil. "If you want 
your place a howling wilderness." 

He looked at the ruin her rubber had wrought. 
"They were rather nice. Could — could you rub 
them in again?" 

"Not if I tried a hundred years. Besides, they 
were rather impudent. What time is it?" 

"No time at all. It's half -past three." 

"Dear me! I must be going. And if you're 
197 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

really going to start that precious critical book- 
store in the fall, you must begin work on it right 
away." 

"Work?" 

" Reading up for it. If you're going to guar- 
antee the books, you must know what's in them, 
mustn't you?" 

He realized that he must do what she said; 
he must know from his own knowledge what was 
in the books he offered for sale, and he began 
reading, or reading at, the new books immediately. 
He was a good deal occupied by day with the ar- 
rangement of his store, though he left it mainly 
with the lively young decorator who undertook 
for a lump sum to realize Margaret Green's ideas. 
It was at night that he did most of his reading 
in the spring books which the publishers were will- 
ing to send him gratis, when they understood he 
was going to open a bookstore, and only wanted 
sample copies. As long as she remained in town 
Margaret Green helped him read, and they talked 
the books over, and mostly rejected them. By the 
time she went to Europe in August with another 
elderly girl they had not chosen more than eight 
or ten books; but they hoped for better things 
in the fall. 

Word of what he was doing had gone out from 
Margaret, and a great many women of their rather 

198 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

esthetic circle began writing to him about the 
books they were reading, and commending them 
to him or warning him against them. The circle 
of his volunteer associates enlarged itself in the 
nature of an endless chain, and before society 
quite broke up for the summer a Sympathetic Tea 
was offered to Erlcort by a Leading Society 
Woman at the Intellectual Club, where he was 
invited to address the Intellectuals in explanation 
of his project. This was before Margaret sailed, 
and he hurried to her in horror. 

"Why, of course you must accept. You're not 
going to hide your Critical Bookstore under a 
bushel; you can't have too much publicity." 

The Leading Society Woman flowed in fulsome 
gratitude at his acceptance, and promised no one 
but the club should be there; he had hinted his 
reluctance. She kept her promise, but among the 
Intellectuals there was a girl who was a just be- 
ginning journalist, and who pumped Erlcort's 
whole scheme out of him, unsuspicious of what she 
was doing, till he saw it all, with his picture, in 
the Sunday Supplement. She rightly judged that 
the intimacy of an interview would be more popu- 
lar with her readers than the cold and distant re- 
port of his formal address, which she must give, 
though she received it so ardently with all the 
other Intellectuals. They flocked flatteringly, al- 

199 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

most suffocatingly, around him at the end. His 
scheme was just what every one had vaguely 
thought of: something must be done to stem the 
tide of worthless fiction, which was so often shock- 
ing as well as silly, and they would only be too 
glad to help read for him. They were nearly all 
just going to sail, but they would each take a 
spring book on the ship, and write him about it 
from the other side; they would each get a fall 
book coming home, and report as soon as they 
got back. 

His scheme was discussed seriously and satiri- 
cally by the press; it became a joke with many 
papers, and a byword quickly worn out, so that 
people thought that it had been dropped. But 
Erlcort gave his days and nights to preparation 
for his autumnal campaign. He studied in careful 
comparison the reviews of the different literary 
authorities, and was a little surprised to find, 
when he came to read the books they reviewed, 
how honest and adequate they often were. He 
was obliged to own to himself that if people were 
guided by them, few worthless books would be 
sold, and he decided that the immense majority 
of the book-buyers were not guided by the critics. 
The publishers themselves seemed not so much 
to blame when he went to see them and explained 
his wish to deal with them on the basis of a critical 

200 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

bookseller. They said they wished all the book- 
sellers were like him, for they would ask nothing 
better than to publish only good books. The 
trouble, they said, lay with the authors; they 
wrote such worthless books. Or if now and then 
one of them did write a good book and they were 
over-tempted to publish it, the public united in 
refusing to buy it. So he saw? But if the book- 
sellers persisted in selling none but good books, 
perhaps something might be done. At any rate 
they would like to see the experiment tried. 

Erlcort felt obliged to read the books suggested 
to him by the endless chain of readers who vol- 
unteered to read for him, on both sides of the 
ocean, or going and coming on the ocean. Mostly 
the books they praised were abject rubbish, but 
it took time to find this out, and he formed the 
habit of reading far into the night, and if he was 
very much vexed at discovering that the book 
recommended to him was trash, he could not 
sleep unless he took veronal, and then he had a 
ghastly next day. 

He did not go out of town except for a few brief 
sojourns at places where he knew cultivated people 
were staying, and could give him their opinions 
of the books he was reading. When the pub- 
lishers began, as they had agreed, to send him 
their advance sheets, the stitched but unbound 

201 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

volumes roused so much interest by the novelty 
of their form that his readers could not give an 
undivided attention to their contents. He fore- 
saw that in the end he should have to rely upon 
the taste of mercenaries in his warfare against 
rubbish, and more and more he found it neces- 
sary to expend himself in it, to read at second 
hand as well as at first. His greatest relief was 
in returning to town and watching the magical 
changes which the decorator was working in his 
store. This was consolation, this was inspiration, 
but he longed for the return of Margaret Green, 
that she might help him enjoy the realization of 
her ideas in the equipment of the place; and he 
held the decorator to the most slavish obedience 
through the carpenters and painters who created 
at his bidding a miraculous interior, all white, or 
just off-white, such as had never been imagined 
of a bookstore in New York before. It was ac- 
tually ready by the end of August, though smelling 
a little of turpentine still, and Erlcort, letting him- 
self in at the small-paned black door, and ranging 
up and down the long, beautiful room, and round 
and round the central book-table, and in and out 
between the side tables, under the soft, bright 
shelving of the walls, could hardly wait the arrival 
of the Minnedingdong in which the elderly girl 
had taken her passage back. One day, ten days 

202 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

ahead of time, she blew in at the front door in a 
paroxysm of explanation; she had swapped pas- 
sages home with another girl who wanted to come 
back later, while she herself wanted to come back 
earlier. She had no very convincing reason for 
this as she gave it, but Erlcort did not listen to 
her reason, whatever it was. He said, between 
the raptures with the place that she fell in and 
out of, that now she was just in time for the fur- 
nishing, which he never could have dared to under- 
take alone. 

In the gay September weather they visited all 
the antiquity shops in Fourth Avenue, and then 
threw themselves frankly upon reproductions, 
which they bought in the native wood and ordered 
painted, the settles and the spindle-backed chairs 
in the cool gray which she decided was the thing. 
In the same spirit they bought new brass fire- 
irons and new shovel and tongs, but all very tall 
and antique-looking, and then they got those little 
immoral mirrors, which Margaret Green attached 
with her own hands to the partitions of the shelv- 
ing. She also got soft green silk curtains for the 
chimney windows and for the sash of the front 
door; even the front windows she curtained, but 
very low, so that a salesman or a saleswoman could 
easily reach over from the interior and get a book 
that any customer had seen from the outside. 

203 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

One day when all this was done, and Erlcort had 
begun ordering in a stock of such books as he had 
selected to start with, she said: "You're looking 
rather peak6d, aren't you?" 

"Well, I've been feeling rather peaked, until 
lately, keeping awake to read and read after the 
volunteer readers." 

"You mean you've lost sleep?" 

"Something like that." 

"Well, you mustn't. How many books do 
you start with?" 

"About twenty-five." 

"Good ones? It's a lot, isn't it? I didn't sup- 
pose there were so many." 

"Well, to fill our shelves I shall have to order 
about a thousand of each." 

"You'll never sell them in the world! You'll 
be ruined." 

"Oh no; the publishers will take them back." 

"How nice of them! But that's only what 
painters have to do when the dealers can't sell 
their pictures." 

A month off, the prospect was brilliant, and 
when the shelves and tables were filled and the 
sketches and bas-reliefs were stuck about and the 
little immoral mirrors were hung, the place was 
charming. The chairs and settles were all that 
could be asked; Margaret Green helped put them 

204 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

about; and he let her light the low fire on the 
hearth of the Franklin stove; he said he should 
not always burn hickory, but he had got twenty- 
four sticks for two dollars from an Italian in a 
cellar near by, and he meant to burn that much. 
She upbraided him for his extravagance while 
touching the match to the paper under the kin- 
dling; but October opened cold, and he needed 
the fire. 

The enterprise seemed rather to mystify the 
neighborhood, and some old customers of the old 
codger's came in upon one fictitious errand and 
another to see about it, and went away without 
quite making it out. It was a bookstore, all 
right, they owned in conference, but what did he 
mean by "critical"? 

The first bona fide buyer appeared in a little girl 
who could just get her chin on the counter, and 
who asked for an egg-beater. Erlcort had fregun 
with only one assistant, the young lady who 
typed his letters and who said she guessed she 
could help him when she was not working. She 
leaned over and tried to understand the little girl, 
and then she called to Erlcort where he stood with 
his back to the fire and the morning paper open 
before his face. 

"Mr. Erlcort, have we got a book called The 
Egg-beater? 19 

205 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

"The Egg-beater?" he echoed, letting his paper 
drop below his face. 

"No, no!" the little girl shouted, angrily. "It 
ain't a book. It's a thing to beat eggs with. 
Mother said to come here and get it," 

"Well, she's sent you to the wrong place, little 
girl. You want to go to a hardware-store," the 
young lady argued. 

"Ain't this No. 1232?" 

"Yes." 

"Well, this is the right place. Mother said to 
go to 1232. I guess she knows. She's an old 
customer." 

"The Egg-beater! The Egg-beater! 79 the blithe 
young novelist to whom Erlcort told the story 
repeated. He was still happy in his original suc- 
cess as a best-seller, and he had come to the 
Critical Bookstore to spy out the stock and see 
whether his last novel was in it; but though it 
was not, he joyously extended an acquaintance 
with Erlcort which had begun elsewhere. "The 
Egg-beater? What a splendid title for a story of 
adventure! Keep the secret of its applicability 
to the last word, or perhaps never reveal it at all, 
and leave the reader worrying. That's one way; 
makes him go and talk about the book to all the 
girls he knows and get them guessing. Best ad. 
in the world. The Egg-beater! Doesn't it suggest 

206 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

desert islands and penguins' nests in the rocks? 
Fellow and girl shipwrecked, and girl wants to 
make an omelette after they've got sick of plain 
eggs, and can't for want of an egg-beater. Heigh ? 
He invents one — makes it out of some wire that 
floats off from the wreck. See? When they are 
rescued, she brings it away, and doesn't let him 
know it till their Iron Wedding Day. They keep 
it over his study fireplace always." 

This author was the first to stretch his legs 
before Erlcort's fire from his seat on one of the 
reproductions. He could not say enough of the 
beauty of the place, and he asked if he might sit 
there and watch for the old codger's old cus- 
tomers coming to buy hardware. There might 
be copy in it. 

But the old customers did not come so often as 
he hoped and Erlcort feared. Instead there came 
bona fide book-buyers, who asked some for a book 
and some for a particular book. The first were 
not satisfied with the books that Erlcort or his 
acting saleslady recommended, and went away 
without buying. The last were indignant at 
not finding what they wanted in Erlcort's se- 
lection. 

"Why don't you stock it?" they demanded. 

11 Because I don't think it's worth reading." 

"Oh, indeed!" The sarcastic customers were 
207 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

commonly ladies. "I thought you let the public 
judge of that!" 

" There are bookstores where they do. This is 
a critical bookstore. I sell only the books that I 
think worth reading. If you had noticed my 
sign—" 

"Oh!" the customer would say, and she, too, 
would go away without buying. 

There were other ladies who came, links of the 
endless chain of volunteer readers who had tried 
to help Erlcort in making his selection, and he 
could see them slyly looking his stock over for 
the books they had praised to him. Mostly 
they went away without comment, but with heads 
held high in the offense which he felt even •more 
than saw. One, indeed, did ask him why he had 
not stocked her chosen book, and he had to say, 
"Well, when I came to go through it carefully, 
I didn't think it quite — " 

"But here is The Green Bay Tree, and The 
Biggest Toad in the Puddle, and — " 

1 ' I know. For one reason and another I thought 
them worth stocking." 

Then another head went away high in the air, 
with its plumes quivering. One afternoon late a 
lady came flying in with all the marks, whatever 
they are, of transatlantic travel upon her. 

"I'm just through the customs, and I've mo- 
208 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

tored up here the first thing, even before I went 
home, to stop you from selling that book I recom- 
mended. It's dreadful; and, horrors! horrors! 
here it is by the hundreds ! Oh, Mr. Erlcort ! You 
mustn't sell that dreadful book! You see, I had 
skipped through it in my berth going out, and 
posted my letter the first thing; and just now, 
coming home, I found it in the ship's library and 
came on that frightful episode. You know! 
Where — How could you order it without read- 
ing it, on a mere say-so? It's utterly immoral!" 

"I don't agree with you," Erlcort answered, 
dryly. ' ' I consider that passage one of the finest 
in modern fiction — one of the most ennobling and 
illumining — " 

1 "Ennobling!" The lady made a gesture of 
horror. "Very well! If that is your idea of a 
critical bookstore, all I've got to say is — " 

But she had apparently no words to say it in, 
and she went out banging but failing to latch the 
door which let through the indignant snort of her 
car as it whirled her away. She left Erlcort and 
his assistant to a common silence, but he imagined 
somehow a resolution in the stenographer not to 
let the book go unsearched till she had grasped 
the full iniquity of that episode and felt all its 
ennobling force. He was not consoled when an- 
other lady came in and, after drifting unmolested- 

J 4 209 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

ly about (it was the primary rule of the place not 
to follow people up), stopped before the side shelf 
where the book was ranged in dozens and scores. 
She took a copy from the neat ranks, and opened 
it ; then she lifted her head by chance and caught 
sight of her plume in one of the little mirrors. 
She stealthily lifted herself on tiptoe till she could 
see her face, and then she turned to the assistant 
and said, gently, "I believe I should like this book, 
please/ ' and paid for it and went out. 

It was now almost on the stroke of six, and 
Erlcort said to his assistant: "111 close the store, 
Miss Pearsall. You needn't sta*y any longer.' * 

"All right, sir," the girl said, and went into the 
little closet at the rear for her hat and coat. Did 
she contrive to get a copy of that book under her 
coat as she passed the shelf where it lay? 

When she was gone, he turned the key in the 
door and went back and sat down before the fire 
dying on the hearth of the Franklin stove. It was 
not a very cheerful moment with him, but he 
could not have said that the day had been unprofit- 
able, either spiritually or pecuniarily. In its ex- 
periences it had been a varied day, and he had 
really sold a good many books. More people than 
he could have expected had taken him seriously 
and even intelligently. It is true that he had 
been somewhat vexed by the sort of authority 

2IO 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

the president of the Intellectual Club had shown 
in the way she swelled into the store and patronized 
him and it, as if she had invented them both, and 
blamed him in a high, sweet voice for having so 
many old books. "My idea was that it would 
be a place where one could come for the best of 
the new books. But here! Why, half of them I 
saw in June before I sailed !" She chided him 
merrily, and she acted as if it were quite part of 
the joke when he said that he did not think a 
good book could age much in four months. She 
laughed patronizingly at his conceit of getting in 
the fall books by Thanksgiving; but even for the 
humor of it she could not let him say he should 
not do anything in holiday books. "I had ex- 
pected to get all my Christmas books of you, Mr. 
Erlcort, ,, she crowed, but for the present she 
bought nothing. In compensation he recalled the 
gratitude, almost humble gratitude, of a lady (she 
was a lady!) who had come that day, bringing her 
daughter to get a book, any book in his stock, 
and to thank him for his enterprise, which she had 
found worked perfectly in the case of the book 
she had got the week before; the book had been 
an unalloyed delight, and had left a sense of 
heightened self-respect with her: that book of 
the dreadful episode. 

He wished Margaret Green had been there; 

211 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

but she had been there only once since his open- 
ing; he could not think why. He heard a rattling 
at the door-latch, and he said before he turned to 
look, "What if it should be she now?" But when 
he went to peer through the door-curtain it was 
only an old fellow who had spent the better part 
of the afternoon in the best chair, reading a book. 
Erlcort went back to the fire and let him rattle, 
which he did rather a long time, and then went 
away, Erlcort hoped, in dudgeon. He was one of 
a number of customers who had acted on the half 
of his motto asking them to sit down and rest 
them, after acting on the other half to look round 
all they wanted. Most of them did not read, 
even ; they seemed to know one another, and they 
talked comfortably together. Erlcort recognized 
a companionship of four whom he had noticed in 
the Park formerly; they were clean-enough-look- 
ing elderly men, but occupied nearly all the chairs 
and settles, so that lady customers did not like 
to bring books and look over them in the few places 
left, and Erlcort foresaw the time when he should 
have to ask the old fellows to look around more and 
rest them less. In resuming his own place before 
the fire he felt the fleeting ache of a desire to ask 
Margaret Green whether it would not be a good 
plan to remove the motto from the chimneypiece. 
He would not have liked to do it without asking 

212 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

her; it had been her notion to put it there, and 
her other notion of the immoral mirrors had cer- 
tainly worked well. The thoughtful expression 
they had reflected on the faces of lady customers 
had sold a good many books; not that Erlcort 
wished to sell books that way, though he argued 
with himself that his responsibility ought strictly 
to end with the provision of books which he had 
critically approved before offering them for sale. 

His conscience was not wholly at peace as to 
his stock, not only the books which he had in- 
cluded, but also those he had excluded. Some of 
these tacitly pleaded against his severity; in one 
case an author came and personally protested. 
This was the case of a book by the ex-best-seller, 
who held that his last book was so much better 
than his first that it ought certainly to be found 
in any critical bookstore. The proceeds of his 
best-seller had enabled him to buy an electric 
runabout, and he purred up to Erlcort's door in 
it to argue the matter with him. He sat down in 
a reproduction and proved, gaily, that Erlcort 
was quite wrong about it. He had the book with 
him, and read passages from it; then he read 
passages from some of the books on sale and de- 
fied Erlcort to say that his passages were not just 
as good, or, as he put it merrily, the same as. He 
held that his marked improvement entitled him 

213 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

to the favor of a critical bookstore; without this, 
what motive had he in keeping from a reversion 
to the errors which had won him the vicious pros- 
perity of his first venture? Hadn't Erlcort a duty 
to perform in preventing his going back to the 
bad? Refuse this markedly improved fiction, and 
you drove him to writing nothing but best-sellers 
from now on. He urged Erlcort to reflect. 

They had a jolly time, and the ex-best-seller 
went away in high spirits, prophesying that Erl- 
cort would come to his fiction yet. 

There were authors who did not leave Erlcort 
so cheerful when they failed to see their books on 
his shelves or tables. Some of them were young 
authors who had written their worthless books 
with a devout faith in their worth, and they went 
away more in sorrow than in anger, and yet more 
in bewilderment. Some were old authors who had 
been all their lives acceptably writing second-rate 
books and trying to make them unacceptably first- 
rate. If he knew them he kept out of their way, 
but the dejection of their looks was not less a 
pang to him if he saw them searching his stock 
for their books in vain. 

He had his own moments of dejection. The in- 
terest of the press in his enterprise had flashed 
through the Sunday issues of a single week, and 
then flashed out in lasting darkness. He woii- 

314 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

dered vaguely if he had counted without the 
counting-house in hoping for their continued favor ; 
he could not realize that nothing is so stale as old 
news, and that no excess of advertising would 
have relumed those fitful fires. 

He would have liked to talk the case over with 
Margaret Green. After his first revolt from the 
easy publicity the reporters had first given him, 
he was aware of having enjoyed it — perhaps 
vulgarly enjoyed it. But he hoped not quite 
that; he hoped that in his fleeting celebrity he 
had cared for his scheme rather than himself. 
He had really believed in it, and he liked having 
it recognized as a feature of modern civilization, 
an innovation which did his city and his country 
credit. Now and then an essayist of those who 
wrote thoughtful articles in the Sunday or Satur- 
day-evening editions had dropped in, and he had 
opened his heart to them in a way he would not 
have minded their taking advantage of. Secretly 
he hoped they would see a topic in his enterprise 
and his philosophy of it. But they never did, 
and he was left to the shame of hopes which had 
held nothing to support defeat. He would have 
liked to confess his shame and own the justice of 
his punishment to Margaret Green, but she seemed 
the only friend who never came near. Other 
friends came, and many strangers, the friends to 

215 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

look and the strangers to buy. He had no reason 
to complain of his sales; the fame of his critical 
bookstore might have ceased in New York, be- 
cause it had gone abroad to Chicago and St. 
Louis and Pittsburg; people who were clearly from 
these commercial capitals and others came and 
bought copiously of his criticized stock, and they 
praised the notion of it in telling him that he 
ought to open branches in their several cities. 

They were all women, and it was nearly all 
women who frequented the Critical Bookstore, 
but in their multitude Margaret Green was not. 
He thought it the greater pity because she would 
have enjoyed many of them with him, and would 
have divined such as hoped the culture implicated 
by a critical bookstore would come off on them 
without great effort of their own ; she would have 
known the sincere spirits, too, and could have 
helped direct their choice of the best where all 
was so good. He smiled to find that he was in- 
voking her help, which he had no right to. 

His longing had no effect upon her till deep in 
January, when the weather was engaged late one 
afternoon in keeping the promise of a January 
thaw in the form of the worst snow-storm of the 
winter. Then she came thumping with her um- 
brella-handle at his door as if, he divined, she were 
too stiff -handed or too package-laden to press the 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

latch and let herself in, and she almost fell in, 
but saved herself by spilling on the floor some 
canvases and other things which she had been 
getting at the artist's-materials store near by. 
" Don't bother about them," she said, "but take 
me to the fire as fast as you can," and when she 
had turned from snow to rain and had dripped 
partially dry before the Franklin stove, she asked, 
"Where have you been all the time?" 

"Waiting here for you," he answered. 

"Well, you needn't. I wasn't going to come — 
or at least not till you sent for me, or said you 
wanted my advice." 

"I don't want your advice now." 

"I didn't come to give it. I just dropped in 
because if I hadn't I should have just dropped 
outside. How have you been getting along with 
your ridiculous critical bookstore?" 

"Well, things are rather quiet with us just now, 
as the publishers say to the authors when they 
don't want to publish their books." 

"Yes, I know that saying. Why didn't you 
go in for the holiday books?" 

"How did you know I didn't?" 

"Lots of people told me." 

1 ' Well, then, I'll tell you why. I would have had 
to read them first, and no human being could do that 
— not even a volunteer link in an endless chain/' 

217 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

"I see. But since Christmas ?" 

"You know very well that after Christmas the 
book market drops dead." 

"Yes, so I've been told." She had flung her 
wet veil back over her shoulders, and he thought 
she had never looked so adorably plain before; if 
she could have seen herself in a glass she would have 
found her whole face out of drawing. It seemed as 
if his thinking had put her in mind of them, and 
she said, "Those immoral mirrors are shameful/ ' 

"They've sold more of the best books than 
anything else." 

"No matter. As soon as I get a little drier I 
shall take them down." 

"Very well. I didn't put them up." He laid 
a log of hickory on the fire. "I'm not doing it 
to dry you quicker." 

"Oh, I know. I'll tell you one thing. You 
ought to keep the magazines, or at least the Big 
Four. You could keep them with a good con- 
science, and you could sell them without reading; 
they're always good." 

"There's an idea in that. I believe I'll try it." 

Margaret Green was now dry enough, and she 
rose and removed the mirrors. In doing this she 
noticed that Erlcort had apparently sold a good 
many of his best books, and she said: "Well! I 
don't see why you should be discouraged." 

218 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

"Who said I was? I'm exultant." 

"Then you were exulting with the corners of 
your mouth down just now. Well, I must be 
going. Will you get a taxi to flounder over to 
the Subway with me?" While Erlcort was tele- 
phoning she was talking to him. "I believe the 
magazines will revive public interest in your 
scheme. Put them in your window. Try to get 
advance copies for it." 

"You have a commercial genius, Margaret 
Green." 

"When it comes to selling literature, I have. 
Selling art is where I fall down." 

"That's because you always try to sell your 
own art. I should fall down, too, if I tried to 
sell my own literature." 

They got quite back to their old friendliness; 
the coming of the taxi gave them plenty of time. 
The electric lights were turned brilliantly on, but 
there, at the far end of the store, before the Frank- 
lin stove, they had a cozy privacy. At the mo- 
ment of parting she said : 

"If I were you I should take out these settles. 
They simply invite loafing." 

"I've noticed that they seem to do that." 

"And better paint out that motto." 

"I've sometimes fancied I'd better. That invites 
loafing, too; though some nice people like it," 

219 



THE CRITICAL, BOOKSTORE 

"Nice people? Why haven't some of them 
bought a picture ?" He perceived that she had 
taken in the persistent presence of the sketches 
when removing the mirrors, and he shared the 
indignation she expressed: "Shabby things !" 

She stood with the mirrors under her arm, and 
he asked what she was going to do with them, as 
he followed her to the door with her other things. 

• ' Put them around the studio. But you needn't 
come to see the effect." 

"No. I shall come to see you." 

But when he came in a lull of February, and he 
could walk part of the way up through the Park 
on the sunny Saturday afternoon, she said: 

"I suppose you've come to pour out some more 
of your griefs. Well, pour away! Has the maga- 
zine project failed?" 

"On the contrary, it has been a succds fou. 
But I don't feel altogether easy in my mind about 
it. The fact is, they seem to print much more 
rubbish than I supposed." 

"Of course they do; they must; rubbish is the 
breath in their nostrils." 

She painted away, screwing her eyes almost shut 
and getting very close to her picture. He had 
never thought her so plain; she was letting her 
mouth hang open. He wondered why she was so 
charming; but when she stepped back rhythmi- 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

cally, tilting her pretty head this way and that, 
he saw why : it was her unfailing grace. She sud- 
denly remembered her mouth and shut it to say, 
"Well?" 

"Well, some people have come back at me. 
They've said, What a rotten number this or that 
was ! They were right ; and yet there were things 
in all those magazines better than anything they 
had ever printed. What's to be done about it? 
I can't ask people to buy truck or read truck be- 
cause it comes bound up with essays and stories 
and poems of the first quality." 

"No. You can't. Why," she asked, drifting 
up to her picture again, "don't you tear the bad 
out, and sell the good?" 

Erlcort gave a disdainful sound, such as cannot 
be spelled in English. "Do you know how de- 
fiantly the bad is bound up with the good in the 
magazines? They're wired together, and you 
could no more tear out the bad and leave the 
good than you could part vice from virttie in 
human nature." 

"I see," Margaret Green said, but she saw no 
further, and she had to let him go disconsolate. 
After waiting a decent time she went to find him 
in his critical bookstore. It was late in an after- 
noon of the days that were getting longer, and 
only one electric was lighted in the rear of the 

221 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

room, where Erlcort sat before the fireless Frank- 
lin stove, so busy at something that he scarcely 
seemed aware of her. 

"What in the world are you doing ?" she de- 
manded. 

He looked up. "Who? I? Oh, it's you! 
Why, I'm merely censoring the truck in the May 
number of this magazine." He held up a little 
roller, as long as the magazine was wide, blacked 
with printer's ink, which he had been applying 
to the open periodical. "I've taken a hint from 
the way the Russian censorship blots out seditious 
literature before it lets it go to the public." 

"And what a mess you're making!" 

"Of course it will have to dry before it's put on 
sale." 

"I should think so. Listen to me, Frederick 
Erlcort: you're going crazy." 

"I've sometimes thought so: crazy with con- 
ceit and vanity and arrogance. Who am I that 
I should set up for a critical bookstore-keeper? 
What is the Republic of Letters, anyway? A 
vast, benevolent, generous democracy, where one 
may have what one likes, or a cold oligarchy where 
he is compelled to take what is good for him? Is 
it a restricted citizenship, with a minority repre- 
sentation, or is it universal suffrage?" 

"Now," Margaret Green said, "you are talk- 

222 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

ing sense. Why didn't you think of this in the 
beginning?" 

"Is it a world, a whole earth," he went on, 
"where the weeds mostly outflourish the flow- 
ers, or is it a wretched little florist's conservatory 
where the watering-pot assumes to better the in- 
struction of the rain which falls upon the just and 
the unjust? What is all the worthy family of 
asses to do if there are no thistles to feed them? 
Because the succulent fruits and nourishing 
cereals are better for the finer organisms, are the 
coarser not to have fodder? No; I have made 
a mistake. Literature is the whole world; it is 
the expression of the gross, the fatuous, and the 
foolish, and it is the pleasure of the gross, the 
fatuous, and the foolish, as well as the expression 
and the pleasure of the wise, the fine, the elect. 
Let the multitude have their truck, their rubbish, 
their rot; it may not be the truck, the rubbish, the 
rot that it would be to us, or may slowly and by 
natural selection become to certain of them. But 
let there be no artificial selection, no survival of the 
fittest by main force — the force of the spectator, 
who thinks he knows better than the creator of 
the ugly and the beautiful, the fair and foul, the 
evil and good." 

"Oh, now if the Intellectual Club could hear 
you!" Margaret Green said, with a long, deep, 

223 



THE CRITICAL BOOKSTORE 

admiring suspiration. "And what are you going 
to do with your critical bookstore ?" 

"I'm going to sell it. I've had an offer from 
the author of that best-seller — IVe told you about 
him. I was just trying to censor that magazine 
while I was thinking it over. He's got an idea. 
He's going to keep it a critical bookstore, but the 
criticism is to be made by universal suffrage and 
the will of the majority. The latest books will 
be put to a vote; and the one getting the greatest 
number of votes will be the first offered for sale, 
and the author will receive a free passage to 
Europe by the southern route.' ' 

' ' The southern route !" Margaret mused. "I've 
never been that way. It must be delightful." 

"Then come with me! Tm going." 

"But how can I?" 

"By marrying me!" 

"I never thought of that," she said. Then, 
with the conscientious resolution of an elderly girl 
who puts her fate to the touch of any risk the 
truth compels, she added: "Or, yes! I have. 
But I never supposed you would ask me." She 
stared at him, and she was aware she was letting 
her mouth hang open. While she was trying for 
some word to close it with he closed it for her. 



A FEAST OF REASON 



XIV 
A FEAST OF REASON 

FLORINDO and Lindora had come to the end 
of another winter in town, and had packed 
up for another summer in the country. They were 
sitting together over their last breakfast until the 
taxi should arrive to whirl them away to the sta- 
tion, and were brooding in a joint gloom from the 
effect of the dinner they had eaten at the house 
of a friend the night before, and, "Well, thank 
goodness,' ' she said, "there is an end to that sort 
of thing for one while." 

"An end to that thing," he partially assented, 
"but not that sort of thing." 

"What do you mean?" she demanded excitedly, 
almost resentfully. 

"I mean that the lunch is of the nature of the 
dinner, and that in the country we shall begin 
lunching where we left off dining," 

1 ' Not instantly, ' ' she protested shrilly. ' ' There 
will be nobody there for a while — not for a whole 
month, nearly." 

227 



A FEAST OF REASON 

4 'They will be there before you can turn round, 
almost; and then you women will begin feeding 
one another there before you have well left off 
here." 

"We women !" she protested. 

' ' Yes, you — you women. You give the dinners. 
Can you deny it?" 

"It's because we can't get you to the lunches." 

"In the country you can; and so you will give 
the lunches." 

"We would give dinners if it were not for the 
distance, and the darkness on those bad roads." 

"I don't see where your reasoning is carrying 
you." 

"No," she despaired, "there is no reason in it. 
No sense. How tired of it all I am! And, as 
you say, it will be no time before it is all going 
on again." 

They computed the number of dinners they 
had given during the winter; that was not hard, 
and the sum was not great: six or seven at the 
most, large and small. When it came to the 
dinners they had received, it was another thing; 
but still she considered, "Were they really so 
few? It's nothing to what the English do. They 
never dine alone at home, and they never dine 
alone abroad — of course not! I wonder they can 
stand it. I think a dinner, the happy-to-accept 

228 



A FEAST OF REASON 

kind, is always loathsome: the everlasting soup, 
if there aren't oysters first, or grape-fruit, or melon, 
and the fish, and the entree, and the roast and 
salad, and the ice-cream and the fruit nobody 
touches, and the coffee and cigarettes and cigars 
—how I hate it all!" 

Lindora sank back in her chair and toyed des- 
perately with the fragment of bacon on her plate. 

"And yet," Florindo said, " there is a charm 
about the first dinner of autumn, after you've 
got back." 

"Oh, yes," she assented; "it's like a part of 
our lost youth. We think all the dinners of the 
winter will be like that, and we come away beam- 
mg. 

"But when it keeps on and there's more and 
more of our lost youth, till it comes to being the 
whole—" 

"Florindo!" she stopped him. He pretended 
that he was not going to have said it, and she 
resumed, dreamily, "I wonder what it is makes 
it so detestable as the winter goes on." 

"All customs are detestable, the best of them," 
he suggested, "and I should say, in spite of the 
first autumnal dinner, that the society dinner was 
an unlovely rite. You try to carry if off with 
china and glass, and silver and linen, and if people 
could fix their minds on these, or even on the 

229 



A FEAST OF REASON 

dishes of the dinner as they come successively on, 
it would be all very well; but the diners, the 
diners!" 

"Yes," she said, "the old men are hideous, 
certainly; and the young ones — I try not to look 
at them, poking things into the hollows of their 
faces with spoons and forks — " 

"Better than when it was done with knives! 
Still, it's a horror! A veteran diner-out in full 
action is certainly a hideous spectacle. Often he 
has few teeth of his own, and the dentists don't 
serve him perfectly. He is in danger of dropping 
things out of his mouth, both liquids and solids: 
better not look! His eyes bulge and roll in his 
head in the stress of mastication and deglutition; 
his color rises and spreads to his gray hair or 
over his baldness; his person seems to swell 
vividly in his chair, and when he laughs — ■" 

"Don't, Florindo! It is awful." 

"Well, perhaps no worse than the sight of a 
middle-aged matron tending to overweight and 
bulking above her plate — " 

"Yes, yes! That's dreadful, . too. But when 
people are young — " 

"Oh, when people are young!" He said this 
in despair. Then he went on in an audible muse. 
"When people are young they are not only in 
their own youth; they are in the youth of the 

230 



A FEAST OF REASON 

world, the race. They dine, but they don't think 
of the dinner or the unpleasantness of the diners, 
and the grotesqueness of feeding in common. 
They think — " he broke off in defect of other 
ideas, and concluded with a laugh, "they think 
of themselves. And they don't think of how 
they are looking." 

"They needn't; they are looking very well. 
Don't keep harping on that! I remember when 
we first began going to dinners, I thought it was 
the most beautiful thing in the world. I don't 
mean when I was a girl; a girl only goes to a 
dinner because it comes before a dance. I mean 
when we were young married people ; and I pinned 
up my dress and we went in the horse-cars, or 
even walked. I enjoyed every instant of it: the 
finding who was going to take me in and who you 
were; and the going in; and the hovering round 
the table to find our places from the cards; and 
the seeing how you looked next some one else, 
and wondering how you thought I looked; and 
the beads sparkling up through the champagne 
and getting into one's nose; and the laughing and 
joking and talking! Oh, the talking! What's 
become of it? The talking, last night, it bored 
me to death! And what good stories people used 
to tell, women as well as men! You can't deny 
it was beautiful." 

231 



A FEAST OF REASON 

"I don't; and I don't deny that the forms of 
dining are still charming. It's the dining itself 
that I object to." 

"That's because your digestion is bad." 

"Isn't yours?" 

"Of course it is. What has that got to do 
with it?" 

"It seems to me that we have arrived at what 
is called an impasse in French." He looked up 
at the clock on the wall, and she gave a little jump 
in her chair. "Oh, there's plenty of time. The 
taxi won't be here for half an hour yet. Is there 
any heat left in that coffee?" 

"There will be," she said, and she lighted the 
lamp under the pot. "But I don't like being 
scared out of half a year's growth." 

"I'm sorry. I won't look at the clock any 
more; I don't care if we're left. Where were we? 
Oh, I remember — the objection to dining itself. 
If we could have the forms without the facts, 
dining would be all right. Our superstition is 
that we can't be gay without gorging; that society 
can't be run without meat and drink. But don't 
you remember when we first went to Italy there 
was no supper at Italian houses where we thought 
it such a favor to be asked?" 

"I remember that the young Italian swells 
wouldn't go to the American and English houses 

232 



A FEAST OF REASON 

where they weren't sure of supper. They didn't 
give supper at the Italian houses because they 
couldn't afford it." 

"I know that. I believe they do, now. But — 

1 Sweet are the uses of adversity/ 

and the fasting made for beauty then more 
than the feasting does now. It was a lovelier 
sight to see the guests of those Italian houses 
conversing together without the grossness of feed- 
ing or being fed — the sort of thing one saw at our 
houses when people went out to supper." 

"I wonder," Lindora said, " whether the same 
sort of thing goes on at evening parties still — it's 
so long since I've been at one. It was awful stand- 
ing jammed up in a corner or behind a door and 
eating vis-d-vis with a man who brought you a 
plate; and it wasn't much better when you sat 
down and he stood over you gabbling and gob- 
bling, with his plate in one hand and his fork in 
the other. I was always afraid of his dropping 
things into my lap; and the sight of his jaws 
champing as you looked up at them from below!" 

"Yes, ridiculous. But there was an element of 
the grotesque in a bird's-eye view of a lady mak- 
ing shots at her mouth with a spoon and trying 
to smile and look spirituelle between the shots." 

Lindora as she laughed bowed her forehead on 
233 



A FEAST OF REASON 

the back of her hand in the way Florindo thought 
so pretty when they were both young. "Yes," 
she said, "awful, awful! Why should people want 
to flock together when they feed? Do you sup- 
pose it's a survival of the primitive hospitality 
when those who had something to eat hurried 
to share it with those who had nothing?" 

"Possibly," Florindo said, flattered into con- 
sequence by her momentary deference, or show of 
it. "But the people who mostly meet to feed 
together now are not hungry; they are already so 
stuffed that they loathe the sight of the things. 
Some of them shirk the consequences by frankly 
dining at home first, and then openly or covertly 
dodging the courses." 

"Yes, and you hear that praised as a mark of 
high civilization, or social wisdom. I call it 
wicked, and an insult to the very genius of hos- 
pitality." 

"Well, I don't know. It must give the faster 
a good chance of seeing how funny the feeders 
all look." 

"I wonder, I do wonder, how the feeding in 
common came to be the custom," she said, 
thoughtfully. "Of course where it's done for 
convenience, like hotels or in boarding-houses — 
but to do it wantonly, as people do in society, 
it ought to be stopped." 

234 



A FEAST OF REASON 

"We might call art to our aid — have a large 
tableful of people kodaked in the moments of in- 
gulfing, chewing, or swallowing, as the act varied 
from guest to guest; might be reproduced as 
picture postals, or from films for the movies. 
That would give the ten and twenty cent au- 
diences a chance to see what life in the exclusive 
circles was." 

She listened in dreamy inattention. "It was a 
step in the right direction when people began to 
have afternoon teas. To be sure, there was the 
biting and chewing sandwiches, but you needn't 
take them, and most women could manage their 
teacups gracefully." 

"Or hide their faces in them when they 
couldn't." 

"Only," she continued, "the men wouldn't 
come after the first go off. It was as bad as 
lunches. Now that the English way of serving 
tea to callers has come in, it's better. You really 
get the men, and it keeps them from taking cock- 
tails so much." 

"They're rather glad of that. But still, still, 
there's the guttling and guzzling." 

"It's reduced to a minimum." 

"But it's there. And the first thing you know 
you've loaded yourself up with cake or bread- 
and-butter and spoiled your appetite for dinner. 

23s 



A FEAST OF REASON 

No, afternoon tea must go with the rest of it, if 
we're going to be truly civilized. If people could 
come to one another's tables with full minds in- 
stead of stomachs, there would be some excuse 
for hospitality. Perhaps if we reversed the prac- 
tice of the professional diner-out, and read up 
at home as he now eats at home, and— No, I 
don't see how it could be done. But we might 
take a leaf from the book of people who are not 
in society. They never ask anybody to meals if 
they can possibly help it; if some one happens in 
at meal-times they tell him to pull up a chair — if 
they have to, or he shows no signs first of going. 
But even among these people the instinct of hos- 
pitality — the feeding form of it — lurks somewhere. 
In our farm-boarding days — " 

"Don't speak of them!" she implored. 

"We once went to an evening party,' ' he pur- 
sued, "where raw apples and cold water were 
served." 

"I thought I should die of hunger. And when 
we got home to our own farmer's we ravaged the 
pantry for everything left from supper. It wasn't 
much. There!" Lindora screamed. "There is 
the taxi!" And the shuddering sound of the 
clock making time at their expense penetrated 
from the street. ' ' Come !" 

"How the instinct of economy lingers in us, 
236 



A FEAST OF REASON 

too, long after the use of it is outgrown. It's as 
bad as the instinct of hospitality. We could easily 
afford to pay extra for the comfort of sitting here 
over these broken victuals — " 

"I tell you we shall be left," she retorted; and 
in the thirty-five minutes they had at the station 
before their train started she outlined a scheme of 
social reform which she meant to put in force as 
soon as people began to gather in summer force 
at Lobster Cove. 

He derided the notion; but she said, "You will 
see!" and in rather more time than it takes to 
tell it they were settled in their cottage, where, 
after some unavoidable changes of cook and 
laundress, they were soon in perfect running 
order. 

By this time Lobster Cove was in the full tide 
of lunching and being lunched. The lunches were 
almost exclusively ladies' lunches, and the ladies 
came to them with appetites sharpened by the 
incomparable air of those real Lobster Cove days 
which were all cloudless skies and west winds, 
and by the vigorous automobile exercise of getting 
to one another's cottages. They seized every pre- 
text for giving these feasts, marked each by some 
vivid touch of invention within the limits of the 
graceful convention which all felt bound not to 
transcend. It was some surprising flavor in the 

237 



A FEAST OF REASON 

salad, or some touch of color appealing to the eye 
only; or it was some touch in the ice-cream, or 
some daring substitution of a native dish for it, 
as strawberry or peach shortcake; or some bold 
transposition in the order of the courses; or some 
capricious arrangement of the decoration, or the 
use of wild flowers, or even weeds (as meadow- 
rue or field-lilies), for the local florist's flowers, 
which set the ladies screaming at the moment 
and talking of it till the next lunch. This would 
follow perhaps the next day, or the next but one, 
according as a new cottager's claims insisted or 
a lady had a change of guests, or three days at 
the latest, for no reason. 

In their rapid succession people scarcely noticed 
that Lindora had not given a lunch, and she had 
so far abandoned herself to the enjoyment of 
the others' lunches that she had half forgotten 
her high purposes of reform, when she was sharply 
recalled to them by a lunch which had not at all 
agreed with her; she had, in fact, had to have 
the doctor, and many people had asked one an- 
other whether they had heard how she was. 
Then she took her good resolution in both hands 
and gave an afternoon, asking people by note or 
'phone simply whether they would not come in 
at four sharp. People were a good deal mystified, 
but for this very reason everybody came. Some 

238 



A FEAST OF REASON 

of them came from somebody's lunch, which had 
been so nice that they lingered over it till four, 
and then walked, partly to fill in the time and 
partly to walk off the lunch, as there would be 
sure to be something at Lindora's later on. 

It would be invidious to say what the nature of 
Lindora's entertainment was. It was certainly to 
the last degree original, and those who said the 
worst of it could say no worse than that it was 
queer. It quite filled the time till six o'clock, 
and may be perhaps best described as a negative 
rather than a positive triumph, though what 
Lindora had aimed at she had undoubtedly 
achieved. Whatever it was, whether original or 
queer, it was certainly novel. 

A good many men had come, one at least to 
every five ladies, but as the time passed and a 
certain blankness began to gather over the spirits 
of all, they fell into different attitudes of the 
despair which the ladies did their best to pass off 
for rapture. At each unscheduled noise they 
started in a vain expectation, and when the end 
came, it came so without accent, so without any- 
thing but the clock to mark it as the close, that 
they could hardly get themselves together for 
going away. They did what was nice and right, 
of course, in thanking Lindora for her fascinating 
afternoon, but when they were well beyond hear- 

239 



A FEAST OF REASON 

ing one said to another: "Well, I shall certainly 
have an appetite for my dinner to-night! Why, if 
there had only been a cup of the weakest kind of 
tea, or even of cold water!" 

Then those who had come in autos gathered 
as many pedestrians into them as they would hold 
in leaving the house, or caught them up fainting 
by the way. 

Lindora and Florindo watched them from their 
veranda. 

"Well, my dear," he said, "it's been a wonder- 
ful afternoon; an immense stride forward in the 
cause of anti-eating — or — " 

"Don't speak to me!" she cried. 

"But it leaves one rather hungry, doesn't it?" 

"Hungry!" she hurled back at him. "I could 
eat a — I don't know what!" 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN 
THE FALL 



XV 

CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

A Long-distance Eclogue 
1902 

Morrison. Hello! Hello! Is that you, Weth- 

erbee? 
Wetherbee. Yes. Who are you? What do you 

want with me? 
Morrison. Oh, nothing much. It's Morrison, 
you know; 
Morrison — down at Clamhurst Shortsands. 

Wetherbee. Oh! 

Why, Morrison, of course! Of course, I know! 
How are you, Morrison? And, by the way, 
Where are you? What! You never mean to say 
You are down there yet? Well, by the Holy 

Poker! 
What are you doing there, you ancient joker? 
Morrison. Sticking it out over Thanksgiving 
Day., 
I said I would. I tell you, it is gay 

243 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

Down here. You ought to see the Hunter's Moon, 
These silver nights, prinking in our lagoon. 
You ought to see our sunsets, glassy red, 
Shading to pink and violet overhead. 
You ought to see our mornings, still and clear, 
White silence, far as you can look and hear. 
You ought to see the leaves — our oaks and ashes 
Crimson and yellow, with those gorgeous splashes, 
Purple and orange, against the bluish green 
Of the pine woods; and scattered in between 
The scarlet of the maples; and the blaze 
Of blackberry-vines, along the dusty ways 
And on the old stone walls; the air just balm, 
And the crows cawing through the perfect calm 
Of afternoons all gold and turquoise. Say, 
You ought to have been with wife and me to-day, 
A drive we took — it would have made you sick: 
The pigeons and the partridges so thick; 
And on the hill just beyond Barkin's lane, 
Before you reach the barn of Widow Payne, 
Showing right up against the sky, as clear 
And motionless as sculpture, stood a deer! 
Say, does that jar you just a little? Say, 
How have you found things up there, anyway, 
Since you got back? Air like a cotton string 
To breathe? The same old dust on everything, 
And in your teeth, and in your eyes? The smoke 
From the soft coal, got long beyond a joke? 

244 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

The trolleys rather more upon your curves, 
And all the roar and clatter in your nerves? 
Don't you wish you had stayed here, too? 

Wetherbee. Well, yes, 

I do at certain times, I must confess. 
I swear it is enough at times to make you swear 
You would almost rather be anywhere 
Than here. The building up and pulling down, 
The getting to and fro about the town, 
The turmoil underfoot and overhead, 
Certainly make you wish that you were dead, 
At first; and all the mean vulgarity 
Of city life, the filth and misery 
You see around you, make you want to put 
Back to the country anywhere, hot-foot. 
Yet — there are compensations. 

Morrison. Such as? 

Wetherbee. Why, 

There is the club. 

Morrison. The club I can't deny. 

Many o' the fellows back there? 

Wetherbee. Nearly all. 

Over the twilight cocktails there are tall 
Stories and talk. But you would hardly care; 
You have the natives to talk with down there, 
And always find them meaty. 

Morrison. Well, so-so. 

Their words outlast their ideas at times, you know, 

245 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

And they have staying powers. The theaters 
All open now? 

Wetherbee. Yes, all. And it occurs 
To me: there's one among the things that you 
Would have enjoyed; an opera with the new — 
Or at least the last — music by Sullivan, 
And words, though not Gilbertian, that ran 
Trippingly with it. Oh, I tell you what, 
I'd rather that you had been there than not. 
Morrison. Thanks ever so! 
Wetherbee. Oh, there is nothing mean 

About your early friend. That deer and autumn 

scene 
Were kind of you! And, say, I think you like 
Afternoon teas when good. I have chanced to 

strike 
Some of the best of late, where people said 
They had sent you cards, but thought you must 

be dead. 
I told them I left you down there by the sea, 
And then they sort of looked askance at me, 
As if it were a joke, and bade me get 
Myself some bouillon or some chocolate, 
And turned the subject — did not even give 
Me time to prove it is not life to live 
In town as long as you can keep from freezing 
Beside the autumn sea. A little sneezing, 
At Clamhurst Shortsands, since the frosts set in? 

246 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

Morrison. Well, not enough to make a true 
friend grin. 
Slight colds, mere nothings. With our open fires 
We've all the warmth and cheer that heart desires. 
Next year we'll have a furnace in, and stay 
Not till Thanksgiving, but till Christmas Day. 
It's glorious in these roomy autumn nights 
To sit between the firelight and the lights • 
Of our big lamps, and read aloud by turns 
As long as kerosene or hickory burns. 
We hate to go to bed. 

Wetherbee. Of course you do! 

And hate to get up in the morning, too — 
To pull the coverlet from your frost-bit nose, 
And touch the glary matting with your toes! 
Are you beginning yet to break the ice 
In your wash-pitchers? No? Well, that is nice. 
I always hate to do it — seems as if 
Summer was going; but when your hand is stiff 
With cold, it can be done. Still, I prefer 
To wash and dress beside my register, 
When summer gets a little on, like this. 
But some folks find the other thing pure bliss — 
Lusty young chaps, like you. 

Morrison. And some folks find 

A sizzling radiator to their mind. 
What else have you, there, you could recommend 
To the attention of a country friend? 

247 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

Wetherbee. Well, you know how it is in Madi- 
son Square, 
Late afternoons, now, if the day's been fair — 
How all the western sidewalk ebbs and flows 
With pretty women in their pretty clo'es: 
I've never seen them prettier than this year. 
Of course, I know a dear is not a deer, 
But still, I think that if I had to meet 
One or the other in the road, or street, 
All by myself, I am not sure but that 
I'd choose the dear that wears the fetching 
hat. 

Morrison. Get out! What else? 

Wetherbee. Well, it is not so bad, 

If you are feeling a little down, or sad, 
To walk along Fifth Avenue to the Park, 
When the day thinks perhaps of getting dark, 
And meet that mighty flood of vehicles 
Laden with all the different kinds of swells, 
Homing to dinner, in their carriages — 
Victorias, landaus, chariots, coupes — 
There's nothing like it to lift up the heart 
And make you realize yourself a part, 
Sure, of the greatest show on earth. 

Morrison. Oh, yes, 

I know. I've felt that rapture more or less. 
But I would rather put it off as long 
As possible. I suppose you like the song 

248 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

Of the sweet car-gongs better than the cry 
Of jays and yellowhammers when the sky 
Begins to redden these October mornings, 
And the loons sound their melancholy warnings; 
Or honk of the wild-geese that write their A 
Along the horizon in the evening's gray. 
Or when the squirrels look down on you and bark 
From the nut trees — 

Wetherbee. We have them in the Park 

Plenty enough. But, say, you aged sinner, 
Have you been out much recently at dinner? 

Morrison. What do you mean? You know 
there's no one here 
That dines except ourselves now. 

Wetherbee. Well, that's queer! 

I thought the natives — But I recollect! 
It was not reasonable to expect — 

Morrison. What are you driving at? 

Wetherbee. Oh, nothing much. 

But I was thinking how you come in touch 
With life at the first dinner in the fall, 
When you get back, first, as you can't at all 
Later along. But you, of course, won't care 
With your idyllic pleasures. 

Morrison. Who was there? 

Wetherbee. Oh — ha, ha! What d'you mean by 
there? 

Morrison. Come off! 

249 



CITY AND COUNTRY IN THE FALL 

Wetherbee. What! you remain to pray that 
came to scoff! 

Morrison. You know what I am after. ' 

Wetherbee. Yes, that dinner. 

Just a round dozen: Ferguson and Binner 
For the fine arts; Bowyer the novelist; 
Dr. Le Martin; the psychologist 
Fletcher; the English actor Philipson; 
The two newspaper Witkins, Bob and John; 
A nice Bostonian, Bane the archaeologer, 
And a queer Russian amateur astrologer; 
And Father Gray, the jolly ritualist priest, 
And last your humble servant, but not least. 
The food was not so filthy, and the wine 
Was not so poison. We made out to dine 
From eight till one a.m. One could endure 
The dinner. But, oh say! The talk was poor! 
Your natives down at Clamhurst — 

Morrison. Look ye here! 

What date does Thanksgiving come on this year? 

Wetherbee. Why, I suppose— although I don't 
remember 
Certainly — the usual 28th November. 

Morrison. Novem — You should have waited 
to get sober! 
It comes on the nth of October! 
And that's to-morrow; and if you happen down 
Later, you'd better look for us in town. 

250 



TABLE TALK 



XVI 

TABLE TALK 

HTHEY were talking after dinner in that cozy 
* moment when the conversation has ripened, 
just before the coffee, into mocking guesses and 
laughing suggestions. The thing they were talk- 
ing of was something that would have held them 
apart if less happily timed and placed, but then 
and there it drew these together in what most 
of them felt a charming and flattering intimacy. 
Not all of them took part in the talk, and of those 
who did, none perhaps assumed to talk with au- 
thority or finality. At first they spoke of the 
subject as it, forbearing to name it, as if the 
name of it would convey an unpleasant shock, 
out of temper with the general feeling. 

"I don't suppose/ ' the host said, "that it's 
really so much commoner than it used to be. But 
the publicity is more invasive and explosive. 
That's perhaps because it has got higher up in 
the world and has spread more among the first 
circles. The time was when you seldom heard of 

253 



TABLE TALK 

it there, and now it is scarcely a scandal. I re- 
member that when I went abroad, twenty or 
thirty years ago, and the English brought me to 
book about it, I could put them down by saying 
that I didn't know a single divorced person/' 

''And of course," a bachelor guest ventured, 
"a person of that sort must be single." 

At first the others did not take the joke; then 
they laughed, but the women not so much as the 
men, 

"And you couldn't say that now?" the lady on 
the right of the host inquired. 

"Why, I don't know," he returned, thought- 
fully, after a little interval. "I don't just call one 
to mind." 

"Then," the bachelor said, "that classes you, 
If you moved in our best society you would cer- 
tainly know some of the many smart people whose 
disunions alternate with the morning murders in 
the daily papers." 

"Yes, the fact seems to rank me rather low; 
but I'm rather proud of the fact." 

The hostess seemed not quite to like this arro- 
gant humility. She said, over the length of the 
table (it was not very long), "I'm sure you know 
some very nice people who have not been." 

"Well, yes, I do. But are they really smart 
people? They're of very good family, certainly." 

254 



TABLE TALK 

"You mustn't brag," the bachelor said. 

A husband on the right of the hostess wondered 
if there were really more of the thing than there 
used to be. 

"Qualitatively, yes, I should say. Quantita- 
tively, I'm not convinced," the host answered. 
"In a good many of the States it's been made 
difficult." 

The husband on the right of the hostess was 
not convinced, he said, as to the qualitative in- 
crease. The parties to the suits were rich enough, 
and sometimes they were high enough placed and 
far enough derived. But there was nearly always 
a leak in them, a social leak somewhere, on one 
side or the other. They could not be said to be 
persons of quality in the highest sense." 

"Why, persons of quality seldom can be," the 
bachelor contended. 

The girl opposite, who had been invited to 
balance him in the scale of celibacy by the hostess 
in her study of her dinner-party, first smiled, and 
then alleged a very distinguished instance of di- 
vorce in which the parties were both of immacu- 
late origin and unimpeachable fashion. "No- 
body," she said, "can accuse them of a want of 
quality." She was good-looking, though no longer 
so young as she could have wished; she flung out 
her answer to the bachelor defiantly, but she ad- 

255 



TABLE TALK 

dressed it to the host, and he said that was true; 
certainly it was a signal case; but wasn't it ex- 
ceptional? The others mentioned like cases, 
though none quite so perfect, and then there was 
a lull till the husband on the left of the hostess 
noted a fact which renewed the life of the dis- 
cussion. 

"There was a good deal of agitation, six or eight 
years ago, about it. I don't know whether the 
agitation accomplished any thing. 1 ' 

The host believed it had influenced legislation. 

"For or against?" the bachelor inquired. 

"Oh, against." 

"But in other countries it's been coming in 
more and more. It seems to be as easy in Eng- 
land now as it used to be in Indiana. In France 
it's nothing scandalous, and in Norwegian society 
you meet so many disunited couples in a state of 
quadruplicate reunion that it is very embarrass- 
ing. It doesn't seem to bother the parties to the 
new relation themselves." 

"It's very common in Germany, too," the hus- 
band on the right of the hostess said. 

The husband on her left side said he did not 
know just how it was in Italy and Spain, and no 
one offered to disperse his ignorance. 

In the silence which ensued the lady on the left 
of the host created a diversion in her favor by 

256 



TABLE TALK 

saying that she had heard they had a very good 
law in Switzerland. 

Being asked to tell what it was, she could not 
remember, but her husband, on the right of the 
hostess, saved the credit of his family by supply- 
ing her defect. "Oh, yes. It's very curious. 
We heard of it when we were there. When peo- 
ple want to be put asunder, for any reason or 
other, they go before a magistrate and declare 
their wish. Then they go home, and at the end 
of a certain time — weeks or months— the magis- 
trate summons them before him with a view to 
reconciliation. If they come, it is a good sign; 
if they don't come, or come and persist in their 
desire, then they are summoned after another 
interval, and are either reconciled or put asunder, 
as the case may be, or as they choose. It is not 
expensive, and I believe it isn't scandalous." 

"It seems very sensible," the husband on the 
left of the hostess said, as if to keep the other 
husband in countenance. But for an interval no 
one else joined him, and the mature girl said to 
the man next her that it seemed rather cold- 
blooded. He was a man who had been entreated 
to come in, on the frank confession that he was 
asked as a stop-gap, the original guest having 
fallen by the way. Such men are apt to abuse 
their magnanimity, their condescension. They 

17 2 57 



TABLE TALK 

think that being there out of compassion, and in 
compliance with a hospitality that had not at 
first contemplated their presence, they can say 
anything; they are usually asked without but 
through their wives, who are asked to "lend" 
them, and who lend them with a grudge veiled 
in eager acquiescence; and the men think it will 
afterward advantage them with their wives, when 
they find they are enjoying themselves, if they 
will go home and report that they said something 
vexing or verging on the offensive to their hostess. 
This man now addressed himself to the lady at 
the head of the table. 

"Why do we all talk as if we thought divorce 
was an unquestionable evil?" 

The hostess looked with a frightened air to the 
right and left, and then down the table to her 
husband. But no one came to her rescue, and 
she asked feebly, as if foreboding trouble (for she 
knew she had taken a liberty with this man's 
wife), "Why, don't we?" 

"About one in seven of us doesn't," the stop- 
gap said. 

"Oh!" the girl beside him cried out, in a horror- 
stricken voice which seemed not to interpret her 
emotion truly. "Is it so bad as that?" 

"Perhaps not quite, even if it is bad at all," 
he returned, and the hostess smiled gratefully at 

258 



TABLE TALK 

the girl for drawing his fire. But it appeared 
she had not, for he directed his further speech at 
the hostess again: really the most inoffensive 
person there, and the least able to contend with 
adverse opinions. 

"No, I don't believe we do think it an unques- 
tionable evil, unless we think marriage is so." 
Everybody sat up, as the stop-gap had intended, 
no doubt, and he "held them with his glittering 
eye," or as many as he could sweep with his glance. 
"I suppose that the greatest hypocrite at this 
table, where we are all so frankly hypocrites to- 
gether, will not deny that marriage is the prime 
cause of divorce. In fact, divorce couldn't exist 
without it." 

The women all looked bewilderedly at one an- 
other, and then appealingly at the men. None of 
these answered directly, but the bachelor softly 
intoned out of Gilbert and Sullivan — he was of 
that date: 

"'A paradox, a paradox; 

A most ingenious paradox!' " 

"Yes," the stop-gap defiantly assented. "A 
paradox; and all aboriginal verities, all giant 
truths, are paradoxes." 

"Giant truths is good," the bachelor noted, but 
the stop-gap did not mind him. 

259 



TABLE TALK 

He turned to the host: "I suppose that if 
divorce is an evil, and we wish to extirpate it, we 
must strike at its root, at marriage ?" 

The host laughed. "I prefer not to take the 
floor. I'm sure we all want to hear what you 
have to say in support of your mammoth idea." 

"Oh yes, indeed," the women chorused, but 
rather tremulously, as not knowing what might 
be coming. 

" Which do you mean? That all truth is para- 
doxical, or that marriage is the mother of di- 
vorce?" 

"Whichever you like." 

"The last proposition is self-evident," the stop- 
gap said, supplying himself with a small bunch 
of the grapes which nobody ever takes at dinner; 
the hostess was going to have coffee for the women 
in the drawing-room, and to leave the men to 
theirs with their tobacco at the table. "And you 
must allow that if divorce is a good thing or a 
bad thing, it equally partakes of the nature of its 
parent. Or else there's nothing in heredity." 

"Oh, come!" one of the husbands said. 

"Very well!" the stop-gap submitted. "I 
yield the word to you." But as the other went no 
further, he continued. "The case is so clear that 
it needs no argument. Up to this time, in dealing 
with the evil of divorce, if it is an evil, we have 

260 



TABLE TALK 

simply been suppressing the symptoms; and your 
Swiss method — " 

"Oh, it isn't mine" the man said who had 
stated it. 

11 — Is only a part of the general practice. It is 
another attempt to make divorce difficult, when 
it is marriage that ought to be made difficult.' ' 

"Some," the daring bachelor said, "think it 
ought to be made impossible." The girl across 
the table began to laugh hysterically, but caught 
herself up and tried to look as if she had not 
laughed at all. 

"I don't go as far as that," the stop-gap re- 
sumed, "but as an inveterate enemy of divorce — " 

An "Oh!" varying from surprise to derision 
chorused up; but he did not mind it; he went on 
as if uninterrupted. 

"I should put every possible obstacle, and at 
every step, in the way of marriage. The attitude 
of society toward marriage is now simply pre- 
posterous, absolutely grotesque. Society? The 
whole human framework in all its manifestations, 
social, literary, religious, artistic, and civic, is 
perpetually guilty of the greatest mischief in the 
matter. Nothing is done to retard or prevent 
marriage; everything to accelerate and promote 
it. Marriage is universally treated as a virtue 
which of itself consecrates the lives of the mostly 

261 



TABLE TALK 

vulgar and entirely selfish young creatures who 
enter into it. The blind and witless passion in 
which it oftenest originates, at least with us, is 
flattered out of all semblance to its sister emotions, 
and revered as if it were a celestial inspiration, 
a spiritual impulse. But is it? I defy any one 
here to say that it is." 

As if they were afraid of worse things if they 
spoke, the company remained silent. But this 
did not save them. 

"You all know it isn't. You all know that it 
is the caprice of chance encounter, the result of 
propinquity, the invention of poets and novelists, 
the superstition of the victims, the unscrupulous 
make-believe of the witnesses. As an impulse it 
quickly wears itself out in marriage, and makes 
way for divorce. In this country nine-tenths of 
the marriages are love-matches. The old motives 
which delay and prevent marriage in other 
countries, aristocratic countries, like questions of 
rank and descent, even of money, do not exist. 
Yet this is the land of unhappy unions beyond 
all other lands, the very home of divorce. The 
conditions of marriage are ideally favorable ac- 
cording to the opinions of its friends, who are all 
more or less active in bottling husbands and wives 
up in its felicity and preventing their escape 
through divorce." 

262 



TABLE TALK 

Still the others were silent, and again the stop- 
gap triumphed on. "Now, I am an enemy of 
divorce, too; but I would have it begin before 
marriage." 

"Rather paradoxical again?" the bachelor alone 
had the hardihood to suggest. 

"Not at all. I am quite literal. I would have 
it begin with the engagement. I would have the 
betrothed — the mistress and the lover — come be- 
fore the magistrate or the minister, and declare 
their motives in wishing to marry, and then I 
would have him reason with them, and represent 
that they were acting emotionally in obedience 
to a passion which must soon spend itself, or a 
fancy which they would quickly find illusory. If 
they agreed with him, well and good; if not, he 
should dismiss them to their homes, for say three 
months, to think it over. Then he should summon 
them again, and again reason with them, and dis? 
miss them as before, if they continued obstinate. 
After three months more, he should call them 
before him and reason with them for the last 
time. If they persisted in spite of everything, he 
should marry them, and let them take the con- 
sequences." 

The stop-gap leaned back in his chair defiantly, 
and fixed the host with an eye of challenge. Upon 
the whole the host seemed not so much frightened. 

263 



TABLE TALK 

He said: "I don't see anything so original in all 
that. It's merely a travesty of the Swiss law of 
divorce." 

"And you see nothing novel, nothing that 
makes for the higher civilization in the applica- 
tion of that law to marriage? You all approve 
of that law because you believe it prevents nine- 
tenths of the divorces; but if you had a law that 
would similarly prevent nine-tenths of the mar- 
riages, you would need no divorce law at all." 

"Oh, I don't know that," the hardy bachelor 
said. "What about the one-tenth of the mar- 
riages which it didn't prevent? Would you have 
the parties hopelessly shut up to them? Would 
you forbid them all hope of escape? Would you 
have no divorce for any cause whatever?" 

"Yes," the husband on the right of the hostess 
asked (but his wife on the right of the host looked 
as if she wished he had not mixed in), "wouldn't 
more unhappiness result from that one marriage 
than from all the marriages as we have them now?" 

"Aren't you both rather precipitate?" the stop- 
gap demanded. "I said, let the parties to the 
final marriage take the consequences. But if 
these consequences were too dire, I would not 
forbid them the hope of relief. I haven't thought 
the matter out very clearly yet, but there are one 
or two causes for divorce which I would admit." 

264 



TABLE TALK 

"Ah?" the host inquired, with a provisional 
smile. 

"Yes, causes going down into the very nature 
of things — the nature of men and of women. 
Incompatibility of temperament ought always to 
be very seriously considered as a cause." 

"Yes?" 

"And, above all," and here the stop-gap swept 
the board with his eye, "difference of sex." 

The sort of laugh which expresses uncertainty 
of perception and conditional approval went up. 

The hostess rose with rather a frightened air. 
"Shall we leave them to their tobacco?" she said 
to the other women. 

When he went home the stop-gap celebrated his 
triumph to his wife. "I don't think she'll ask 
you for the loan of me again to fill a place with- 
out you." 

"Yes," she answered, remotely. "You don't 
suppose shell think we live unhappily together?" 



THE ESCAPADE OF A 
GRANDFATHER 



XVII 
THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

"W TELL, what are you doing here?" the 

* V younger of the two sages asked, with a 
resolute air of bonhomie, as he dragged himself 
over the asphalt path, and sank, gasping, into 
the seat beside the other in the Park. His senior 
lifted his head and looked him carefully over to 
make sure of his identity, and then he said: 

"I suppose, to answer your fatuous question, 
I am waiting here to get my breath before I move 
on; and in the next place, I am watching the feet of 
the women who go by in their high-heeled shoes." 

" How long do you think it will take you to get 
your breath in the atmosphere of these motors?" 
the younger sage pursued. "And you don't im- 
agine that these women are of the first fashion, 
do you?" 

"No, but I imagine their shoes are. I have 
been calculating that their average heel is from 
an inch and a half to two inches high, and touches 

269 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

the ground in the circumference of a twenty-five- 
cent piece. As you seem to be fond of asking 
questions, perhaps you will like to answer one. 
Why do you think they do it?" 

"Wear shoes like that?" the younger returned, 
cheerily, and laughed as he added, "Because the 
rest do." 

"Mmm!" the elder grumbled, not wholly 
pleased, and yet not refusing the answer. He 
had been having a little touch of grippe, and was 
somewhat broken from his wonted cynicism. He 
said: "It's very strange, very sad. Just now 
there was such a pretty young girl, so sweet and 
fine, went tottering by as helpless, in any exigency, 
as the daughter of a thousand years of bound-feet 
Chinese women. While she tilted on, the nice 
young fellow with her swept forward with one 
stride to her three on the wide soles and low heels 
of nature-last boots, and kept himself from out- 
walking her by a devotion that made him grit 
his teeth. Probably she was wiser and better and 
brighter than he, but she didn't look it; and I, 
who voted to give her the vote the other day, had 
my misgivings. I think I shall satisfy myself for 
the next five years by catching cold in taking my 
hat off to her in elevators, and getting killed by 
automobiles in helping her off the cars, where I've 
given her my seat." 

270 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

"But you must allow that if her shoes are too 
tight, her skirts are not so tight as they were. Or 
have you begun sighing for the good old hobble- 
skirts, now they're gone?" 

"The hobble-skirts were prettier than I thought 
they were when they were with us, but the 
'tempestuous petticoat' has its charm, which I 
find I'd been missing." 

"Well, at least it's a change," the younger sage 
allowed, "and I haven't found the other changes 
in our dear old New York which I look for when 
I come back in the fall." 

The sages were enjoying together the soft 
weather which lingered with us a whole month 
from the middle of October onward, and the 
afternoon of their meeting in the Park was now 
softly reddening to the dim sunset over the west- 
ward trees. 

"Yes," the elder assented. "I miss the new 
sky-scrapers which used to welcome me back up 
and down the Avenue. But there are more auto- 
mobiles than ever, and the game of saving your 
life from them when you cross the street is madder 
and merrier than I have known it before." 

"The war seems to have stopped building be- 
cause people can't afford it," the other suggested, 
"but it has only increased automobiling." 

"Well, people can't afford that, either. Nine- 
271 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

tenths of them are traveling the road to ruin, I'm 
told, and apparently they can't get over the ground 
too fast. Just look!" and the sages joined in the 
amused and mournful contemplation of the dif- 
ferent types of motors innumerably whirring up 
and down the drive before them, while they 
choked in the fumes of the gasolene. 

The motors were not the costliest types, except 
in a few instances, and in most instances they 
were the cheaper types, such as those who could 
not afford them could at least afford best. The 
sages had found a bench beside the walk where 
the statue of Daniel Webster looks down on the 
confluence of two driveways, and the stream of 
motors, going and coming, is like a seething torrent 
either way. 

1 'The mystery is," the elder continued, "why 
they should want to do it in the way they do it. 
Are they merely going somewhere and must get 
there in the shortest time, possible, or are they 
arriving on a wager? If they are taking a pleas- 
ure drive, what a droll idea of pleasure they must 
have! Maybe they are trying to escape Black 
Care, but they must know he sits beside the 
chauffeur as he used to sit behind the horseman, 
and they know that he has a mortgage in his 
pocket, and can foreclose it any time on the house 
they have hypothecated to buy their car. Ah!" 

272 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

The old man started forward with the involuntary 
impulse of rescue. But it was not one of the peo- 
ple who singly, or in terrorized groups, had been 
waiting at the roadside to find their way across; 
it was only a hapless squirrel of those which used 
to make their way safely among the hoofs and 
wheels of the kind old cabs and carriages, and it 
lay instantly crushed under the tire of a motor. 
"He's done for, poor little wretch! They can't 
get used to the change. Some day a policeman 
will pick me up from under a second-hand motor. 
I wonder what the great Daniel from his pedestal 
up there would say if he came to judgment." 

"He wouldn't believe in the change any more 
than that squirrel. He would decide that he 
was dreaming, and would sleep on, forgetting and 
forgotten." 

"Forgotten," the elder sage assented. "I re- 
member when his fame filled the United States, 
which was then the whole world to me. And now 
I don't imagine that our hyphenated citizens have 
the remotest consciousness of him. If Daniel be- 
gan delivering one of his liberty-and-union-now- 
and-f orever-one-and-inseparable speeches, they 
wouldn't know what he was talking about." 
The sage laughed and champed his toothless jaws 
together, as old men do in the effort to compose 
their countenances after an emotional outbreak. 
18 2 73 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

"Well, for one thing,' ' the younger observed, 
"they wouldn't understand what he said. You 
will notice, if you listen to them going by, that 
they seldom speak English. That's getting to be 
a dead language in New York, though it's still 
used in the newspapers." He thought to hearten 
the other with his whimsicality, for it seemed to 
him that the elder sage was getting sensibly older 
since their last meeting, and that he would be 
the gayer for such cheer as a man on the hither 
side of eighty can offer a man on the thither. 
"Perhaps the Russian Jews would appreciate 
Daniel if he were put into Yiddish for them. 
They're the brightest intelligences among our 
hyphenates. And they have the old-fashioned 
ideals of liberty and humanity, perhaps because 
they've known so little of either." 

His gaiety did not seem to enliven his senior 
much. "Ah, the old ideals!" he sighed. "The 
old ideal of an afternoon airing was a gentle course 
in an open carriage on a soft drive. Now it's a 
vertiginous whirl on an asphalted road, round and 
round and round the Park till the victims stagger 
with their brains spinning after they get out of 
their cars." 

The younger sage laughed. "You've been 
listening to the pessimism of the dear old fellows 
who drive the few lingering victorias. If you'd 

274 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

believe them, all these people in the motors are 
chauffeurs giving their lady-friends joy-rides." 

"Few?" the elder retorted. "There are lots of 
them. I've counted twenty in a single round of 
the Park. I was proud to be in one of them, 
though my horse left something to be desired in 
the way of youth and beauty. But I reflected 
that I was not very young or beautiful myself." 

As the sages sat looking out over the dizzying 
whirl of the motors they smoothed the tops of 
their sticks with their soft old hands, and were 
silent oftener than not. The elder seemed to 
drowse off from the time and place, but he was 
recalled by the younger saying, "It is certainly 
astonishing weather for this season of the year." 

The elder woke up and retorted, as if in offense: 
"Not at all. Fve seen the cherries in blossom at 
the end of October." 

"They didn't set their fruit, I suppose." 

"Well— no." 

"Ah! Well, I saw a butterfly up here in the 
sheep-pasture the other day. I could have put 
out my hand and caught it. It's the soft weather 
that brings your victorias out like the belated 
butterflies. Wait till the first cold snap, and 
there won't be a single victoria or butterfly left." 

"Yes," the elder assented, "we butterflies and 
victorias belong to the youth of the year and the 

275 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

world. And the sad thing is that we won't have 
our palingenesis." 

"Why not?" the younger sage demanded. 
"What is to prevent your coming back in two or 
three thousand years?" 

"Well, if we came back in a year even, we 
shouldn't find room, for one reason. Haven't 
you noticed how full to bursting the place seems? 
Every street is as packed as lower Fifth Avenue 
used to be when the operatives came out of the 
big shops for their nooning. The city's shell hasn't 
been enlarged or added to, but the life in it has 
multiplied past its utmost capacity. All the 
hotels and houses and flats are packed. The 
theaters, wherever the plays are bad enough, 
swarm with spectators. Along up and down every 
side-streets the motors stand in rows, and at the 
same time the avenues are so dense with them 
that you are killed at every crossing. There has 
been no building to speak of during the summer, 
but unless New York is overbuilt next year we 
must appeal to Chicago to come and help hold it. 
But I've an idea that the victorias are remaining 
to stay; if some sort of mechanical horse could 
be substituted for the poor old animals that re- 
mind me of my mortality, I should be sure of it. 
Every now and then I get an impression of per- 
manence in the things of the Park. As long as the 

376 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

peanut-men and the swan-boats are with us I 
sha'n't quite despair. And the other night I was 
moved almost to tears by the sight of a four-in- 
hand tooling softly down the Fifth Avenue drive. 
There it was, like some vehicular phantom, but 
how, whence, when? It came, as if out of the 
early eighteen-nineties ; two middle-aged grooms, 
with their arms folded, sat on the rumble (if it's 
the rumble), but of all the young people who ought 
to have flowered over the top none was left but 
the lady beside the gentleman-driver on the box. 
I've tried every evening since for that four-in-hand, 
but I haven't seen it, and IVe decided it wasn't a 
vehicular phantom, but a mere dream of the past." 

"Four-horse dream," the younger sage com- 
mented, as if musing aloud. 

The elder did not seem quite pleased. "A 
joke?" he challenged. 

"Not necessarily. I suppose I was the helpless 
prey of the rhyme." 

"I didn't know you were a poet." 

"I'm not, always. But didn't it occur to you 
that danger for danger your four-in-hand was 
more dangerous than an automobile to the passing 
human creature?" 

"It might have been if it had been multiplied 
by ten thousand. But there was only one of it, 
and it wasn't going twenty miles an hour." 

277 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

"That's true," the younger sage assented. 
"But there was always a fearful hazard in horses 
when we had them. We supposed they were 
tamed, but, after all, they were only trained 
animals, like Hagenback's." 

"And what is a chauffeur ?" 

"Ah, you have me there!" the younger said, 
and he laughed generously. "Or you would have 
if I hadn't noticed something like amelioration in 
the chauffeurs. At any rate, the taxis are cheap- 
er than they were, and I suppose something will 
be done about the street traffic some time. They're 
talking now about subway crossings. But I 
should prefer overhead foot-bridges at all the 
corners, crossing one another diagonally. They 
would look like triumphal arches, and would 
serve the purpose of any future Dewey victory 
if we should happen to have another hero to win 
one. 

"Well, we must hope for the best. I rather 
like the notion of the diagonal foot-bridges. But 
why not Rows along the second stories as they 
have them in Chester? I should be pretty sure 
of always getting home alive if we had them. 
Now if I'm not telephoned for at a hospital be- 
fore I'm restored to consciousness, I think myself 
pretty lucky. And yet it seems but yesterday, 
as the people used to say in the plays, since I had 

278 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

a pride in counting the automobiles as I walked 
up the Avenue. Once I got as high as twenty 
before I reached Fifty-ninth Street. Now I 
couldn't count as many horse vehicles.' ' 

The elder sage mocked himself in a feeble 
laugh, but the younger tried to be serious. "We 
don't realize the absolute change. Our streets 
are not streets any more; they are railroad tracks 
with locomotives let loose on them, and no signs 
up to warn people at the crossings. It's pathetic 
to see the foot-passengers saving themselves, es- 
pecially the poor, pretty, high-heeled women, 
looking this way and that in their fright, and then 
tottering over as fast as they can totter." 

"Well, I should have said it was outrageous, 
humiliating, insulting, once, but I don't any more; 
it would be no use." 

"No; and so much depends upon the point of 
view. When I'm on foot I feel all my rights in- 
vaded, but when I'm in a taxi it amuses me to see 
the women escaping; and I boil with rage in being 
halted at every other corner by the policeman with 
his new-fangled semaphore, and it's "Go" and 
"Stop" in red and blue, and my taxi-clock going 
round all the time and getting me in for a dollar 
when I thought I should keep within seventy 
cents. Then I feel that pedestrians of every age 
and sex ought to be killed." 

279 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

"Yes, there's something always in the point of 
view; and there's some comfort when you're 
stopped in your taxi to feel that they often do get 
killed." 

The sages laughed together, and the younger 
said: "I suppose when we get aeroplanes in com- 
mon use, there'll be annoying traffic regulations, 
and policemen anchored out at intervals in the 
central blue to enforce them. After all — " 

What he was going to add in amplification can- 
not be known, for a girlish voice, trying to sharpen 
itself from its native sweetness to a conscientious 
severity, called to them as its owner swiftly ad- 
vanced upon the elder sage: "Now, see here, 
grandfather! This won't do at all. You prom- 
ised not to leave that bench by the Indian Hunter, 
and here you are away down by the Falconer, and 
we've been looking everywhere for you. It's too 
bad! I shall be afraid to trust you at all after 
this. Why, it's horrid of you, grandfather! You 
might have got killed crossing the drive." 

The grandfather looked up and verified the 
situation, which seemed to include a young man, 
tall and beautiful, but neither so handsome nor 
so many heads high as the young men in the ad- 
vertisements of ready-to-wear clothing, who smiled 
down on the young girl as if he had arrived with 
her, and were finding an amusement in her severity 

280 



THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER 

which he might not, later. She was, in fact, very 
pretty, and her skirt flared in the fashion of the 
last moment, as she stooped threateningly yet 
fondly over her grandfather. 

The younger sage silently and somewhat guiltily 
escaped from the tumult of emotion which ignored 
him, and shuffled slowly down the path. The 
other finally gave an "Oh!" of recognition, and 
then said, for all explanation and excuse, "I didn't 
know what had become of you," and then they 
all laughed. 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE- 
TRAGEDY 



XVIII 
SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

i 

MISS ISOBEL RAMSEY AND MISS ESTHER GARNETT 

A/JISS RAMSEY: "And they were really un- 
-*■ ■* derstood to be engaged ?" Miss Ramsey is a 
dark-eyed, dark-haired girl of nearly the length 
of two lady's umbrellas and the bulk of one closely 
folded in its sheath. She stands with her elbow 
supported on the corner of the mantel, her temple 
resting on the knuckle of a thin, nervous hand, 
in an effect of thoughtful absent-mindedness. 
Miss Garnett, more or less Merovingian in a cos- 
tume that lends itself somewhat reluctantly to a 
low, thick figure, is apparently poising for depar- 
ture, as she stands before the chair from which 
she has risen beside Miss Ramsey's tea-table and 
looks earnestly up into Miss Ramsey's absent 
face. Both are very young, but aim at being 
much older than they are, with occasional lapses 
into extreme girlhood. 

?8s 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Garnett: "Yes, distinctly. I knew you 
couldn't know, and I thought you ought to." She 
speaks in a deep conviction-bearing and convic- 
tion-carrying voice. "If he has been coming here 
so much." 

Miss Ramsey, with what seems temperamental 
abruptness: "Sit down. One can always think 
better sitting down." She catches a chair under 
her with a deft movement of her heel, and Miss 
Garnett sinks provisionally into her seat. "And 
I think it needs thought, don't you?" 

Miss Garnett: "That is what I expected of you." 

Miss Ramsey: "And have some more tea. 
There is nothing like fresh tea for clearing the 
brain, and we certainly need clear brains for this." 
She pushes a button in the wall beside her, and 
is silent till the maid appears. "More tea, Nora." 
She is silent again while the maid reappears with 
the tea and disappears. "I don't know that he has 
been coming here so very much. But he has no 
right to be coming at all, if he is engaged. That 
is, in that way." 

Miss Garnett: "No. Not unless — he wishes he 
wasn't." 

Miss Ramsey: "That would give him less than 
no right." 

Miss Garnett: "That is true. I didn't think of 
it in that light." 

286 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey: "I'm trying to decide what I 
ought to do if he does want to get off. She said 
herself that they were engaged ?" 

Miss Garnett : "As much as that. Conny under- 
stood her to say so. And Conny never makes a 
mistake in what people say. Emily didn't say 
whom she was engaged to, but Conny felt that 
that was to come later, and she did not quite feel 
like asking, don't you know." 

Miss Ramsey: "Of course. And how came she 
to decide that it was Mr. Ashley?" 

Miss Garnett: "Simply by putting two and two 
together. They two were together the whole time 
last summer." 

Miss Ramsey: "I see. Then there is only one 
thing for me to do." 

Miss Garnett, admiringly: "I knew you would 
say that." 

Miss Ramsey, dreamily: "The question is what 
the thing is." 

Miss Garnett: "Yes!" 

Miss Ramsey: "That is what I wish to think 
over. Chocolates?" She offers a box, catching it 
with her left hand from the mantel at her shoulder, 
without rising. 

Miss Garnett: tl Thank you; do you think they 
go well with tea?" 

Miss Ramsey: "They go well with anything. 
287 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE -TRAGEDY 

But we mustn't allow our minds to be distracted. 
The case is simply this : If Mr. Ashley is engaged 
to Emily Fray, he has no right to go round calling 
on other girls — well, as if he wasn't — and he has 
been calling here a great deal. That is perfectly 
evident. He must be made to feel that girls are 
not to be trifled with — that they are not mere 
toys." 

Miss Garnett: "How splendidly you do reason! 
And he ought to understand that Emily has a 
right—" 

Miss Ramsey: "Oh, I don't know that I care 
about her — or not ^ranarily. Or do you say 
primarily ?" 

Miss Garnett: "I never know. I only use it in 
writing." 

Miss Ramsey: "It's a clumsy word; I don't 
know that I shall. But what I mean is that I 
must act from a general principle, and that prin- 
ciple is that when a man is engaged, it doesn't 
matter whether the girl has thrown herself at him, 
or not — " 

Miss Garnett: "She certainly did, from what 
Conny says." 

Miss Ramsey: "He must be shown that other 
girls won't tolerate his behaving as if he were not 
engaged. It is wrong." 

Miss Garnett: "We must stand together." 
288 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey: "Yes. Though I don't infer that 
he has been attentive to other girls generally." 

Miss Garnett: "No. I meant that if he has 
been coming here so much, you want to prevent 
his trifling with others.' * 

Miss Ramsey: "Something like that. But it 
ought to be more definite. He ought to realize 
that if another girl cared for him, it would be 
cruel to her, paying her attentions, when he was 
engaged to some one else." 

Miss Garnett: "And cruel to the girl he is en- 
gaged to." 

Miss Ramsey: "Yes." She speaks coldly, vague- 
ly. "But that is the personal ground, and I wish 
to avoid that. I wish to deal with him purely in 
the abstract." 

Miss Garnett: " Yes, I understand that. And 
at the same time you wish to punish him. He 
ought to be made to feel it all the more because 
he is so severe himself." 

Miss Ramsey: "Severe?" 

Miss Garnett: "Not tolerating anything that's 
the least out of the way in other people. Taking 
you up about your ideas and showing where you're 
wrong, or even silly. Spiritually snubbing, Conny 
calls it." 

Miss Ramsey: "Oh, I like that in him. It's so 
invigorating. It braces up all your good resolu- 
19 289 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

tions. It makes you ashamed; and shame is 
sanative.' ' 

Miss Garnett: "That's just what I told Conny, 
or the same thing. Do you think another one 
would hurt me? I will risk it, any way. 1 ' She 
takes another chocolate from the box. "Go on." 

Miss Ramsey: "Oh, I was just wishing that I 
had been out longer, and had a little more experi- 
ence of men. Then I should know how to act. 
How do you suppose people do, generally?" 

Miss Garnett: "Why, you know, if they find a 
man in love with them, after he's engaged to an- 
other girl, they make him go back to her, it doesn't 
matter whether they're in love with him them- 
selves or not." 

Miss Ramsey: "I'm not in love with Mr. Ash- 
ley, please." 

Miss Garnett: "No; I'm supposing an extreme 
case." 

Miss Ramsey, after a moment of silent thought : 
"Did you ever hear of anybody doing it?" 

Miss Garnett: "Not just in our set. But I 
know it's done continually." 

Miss Ramsey: "It seems to me as if I had read 
something of the kind." 

Miss Garnett: "Oh yes, the books are full of it. 
Are those mallows? They might carry off the 
effects of the chocolates." Miss Ramsey passes 

290 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 



her the box of marshmallows which she has bent 
over the table to look at. 

Miss Ramsey: "And of course they couldn't get 
into the books if they hadn't really happened. 
I wish I could think of a case in point." 

Miss Garnett: "Why, there was Peg Woffing- 
ton— " 

Miss Ramsey, with displeasure: "She was an 
actress of some sort, wasn't she?" 

Miss Garnett, with meritorious candor: "Yes, 
she was. But she was a very good actress." 

Miss Ramsey: "What did she do?" 

Miss Garnett: "Well, it's a long time since I 
read it; and it's rather old-fashioned now. But 
there was a countryman of some sort, I remember, 
who came away from his wife, and fell in love with 
Peg Wofflngton, and then the wife follows him 
up to London, and begs her to give him back to 
her, and she does it. There's something about a 
portrait of Peg — I don't remember exactly; she 
puts her face through and cries when the wife 
talks to the picture. The wife thinks it is a real 
picture, and she is kind of soliloquizing, and asking 
Peg to give her husband back to her; and Peg 
does, in the end. That part is beautiful. They 
become the greatest friends." 

Miss Ramsey: "Rather silly, I should say." 

Miss Garnett: "Yes, it is rather silly, but I 
291 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

suppose the author thought she had to do some- 
thing." 

Miss Ramsey: " And disgusting. A married man, 
that way! I don't see any comparison with Mr. 
Ashley." 

Miss Garnett: "No, there really isn't any. 
Emily has never asked you to give him up. And 
besides, Peg Woffington really liked him a little — 
loved him, in fact." 

Miss Ramsey: "And I don't like Mr. Ashley at 
all. Of course I respect him — and I admire his 
intellect; there's no question about his being 
handsome; but I have never thought of him for 
a moment in any other way; and now I can't 
even respect him." 

Miss Garnett: " Nobody could. I'm sure Emily 
would be welcome to him as far as I was con- 
cerned. But he has never been about with me 
so much as he has with you, and I don't wonder 
you feel indignant." 

Miss Ramsey, coldly: "I don't feel indignant. 
I wish to be just." 

Miss Garnett: "Yes, that is what I mean. And 
poor Emily is so uninteresting! In the play that 
Kentucky Summers does, she is perfectly fas- 
cinating at first, and you can see why the poor 
girl's fiance should be so taken with her. But 
I'm sure no one could say you had ever given Mr. 

292 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Ashley the least encouragement. It would be 
pure justice on your part. I think you are grand ! 
I shall always be proud of knowing what you were 
going to do." 

Miss Ramsey f after some moments of snubbing 
intention: "I don't know what I am going to 
do myself, yet. Or how. What was that play? 
I never heard of it." 

Miss Garnett: "I don't remember distinctly, but 
it was about a young man who falls in love with 
her, when he's engaged to another girl, and she 
determines, as soon as she finds it out, to disgust 
him, so that he will go back to the other girl, 
don't you know." 

Miss Ramsey: "That sounds rather more prac- 
tical than the Peg Woffington plan. What does 
she do?" 

Miss Garnett: "Nothing you'd like to do." 

Miss Ramsey: "I'd like to do something in such 
a cause. What does she do?" 

Miss Garnett: "Oh, when he is calling on her, 
Kentucky Summers pretends to fly into a rage with 
her sister, and she pulls her hair down, and slams 
everything round the room, and scolds, and drinks 
champagne, and wants him to drink with her, and 
I don't know what all. The upshot is that he is 
only too glad to get away." 

Miss Ramsey: "It's rather loathsome, isn't it?" 
293 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Garnett: "It is rather loathsome. But it 
was in a good cause, and I suppose it was what an 
actress would think of." 

Miss Ramsey: "An actress?" 

Miss Garnett: "I forgot. The heroine is a dis- 
tinguished actress, you know, and Kentucky could 
play that sort of part to perfection. But I don't 
think a lady would like to cut up, much, in the 
best cause." 

Miss Ramsey: "Cut up?" 

Miss Garnett: "She certainly frisks about the 
room a good deal. How delicious these mallows 
are! Have you ever tried toasting them?" 

Miss Ramsey: "At school. There seems an 
idea in it. And the hero isn't married. I don't 
like the notion of a married man." 

Miss Garnett: "Oh, I'm quite sure he isn't mar- 
ried. He's merely engaged. That makes the 
whole difference from the Peg Woflfington story. 
And there's no portrait, I'm confident, so that 
you wouldn't have to do that part." 

Miss Ramsey, haughtily: "I don't propose to do 
any part, if the affair can't be arranged without 
some such mountebank business!" 

Miss Garnett: "You can manage it, if anybody 
can. You have so much dignity that you could 
awe him into doing his duty by a single glance. 
I wouldn't be in his place!" 

294 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey: "I shall not give him a glance. 
I shall not see him when he comes. That will be 
simpler still.' ' To Nora, at the door: "What is 
it, Nora?" 

ii 

NORA, MISS RAMSEY, MISS GARNETT 

Nora: "Mr. Ashley, Miss Ramsey." 
Miss Ramsey, with a severity not meant for 
Nora: "Ask him to sit down in the reception- 
room a moment." 
Nora: "Yes, Miss Ramsey." 

in 

MISS RAMSEY, MISS GARNETT 

Miss Garnett, rising and seizing Miss Ramsey's 
hands: "Oh, Isobel! But you will be equal to 
it! Oh! Oh!" 

Miss Ramsey, with state: "Why are you going, 
Esther? Sit down." 

Miss Garnett: "If I only could stay! If I could 
hide under the sofa, or behind the screen! Isn't 
it wonderful — providential — his coming at the very 
instant? Oh, Isobel!" She clasps her friend con- 
vulsively, and after a moment's resistance Miss 
Ramsey yields to her emotion, and they hide their 

29s 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

faces in each other's neck, and strangle their 
hysteric laughter. They try to regain their com- 
posure, and then abandon the effort with a shud- 
dering delight in the perfection of the incident. 
"What shall you do? Shall you trust to inspira- 
tion? Shall you make him show his hand first, 
and then act? Or shall you tell him at once that 
you know all, and — Or no, of course you can't 
do that. He's not supposed to know that you 
know. Oh, I can imagine the freezing hauteur 
that you'll receive him with, and the icy indiffer- 
ence you'll let him understand that he isn't a 
persona grata with! If I were only as tall as you! 
He isn't as tall himself, and you can tower over 
him. Don't sit down, or bend, or anything; just 
stand with your head up, and glance carelessly 
at him under your lashes as if nobody was there! 
Then it will gradually dawn upon him that you 
know everything, and he'll simply go through the 
floor." They take some ecstatic turns about the 
room, Miss Ramsey waltzing as gentleman. 
She abruptly frees herself. 

Miss Ramsey: "No. It can't be as tacit as all 
that. There must be something explicit. As you 
say, I must do something to cure him of his fancy — 
his perfidy — and make him glad to go back to her." 

Miss Garnett: ' ' Yes ! Do you think he deserves 
it?" 

296 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey: "I've no wish to punish him." 
Miss Garnett: "How noble you are! I don't 
wonder he adores you. I should. But you won't 
find it so easy. You must do something drastic. 
It is drastic, isn't it? or do I mean static? One 
of those things when you simply crush a person. 
But now I must go. How I should like to listen 
at the door ! We must kiss each other very quiet- 
ly, and I must slip out — Oh, you dear! How I 
long to know what you'll do ! But it will be per- 
fect, whatever it is. You always did do perfect 
things." They knit their fingers together in 
parting. "On second thoughts I won't kiss you. 
It might unman you, and you need all your 
strength. Unman isn't the word, exactly, but 
you can't say ungirl, can you? It would be ridicu- 
lous. Though girls are as brave as men when it 
comes to duty. Good-by, dear!" She catches 
Miss Ramsey about the neck, and pressing her 
lips silently to her cheek, runs out. Miss Ramsey 
rings and the maid appears. 

IV 
NORA, MISS RAMSEY 

Miss Ramsey, starting: "Oh! Is that you, 
Nora? Of course! Nora!" 

Nora: "Yes, Miss Ramsey." 
297 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey: l ' Do you know where my brother 
keeps his cigarettes ?" 

Nora: "Why, in his room, Miss Ramsey; you 
told him you didn't like the smell here." 

Miss Ramsey: "Yes, yes. I forgot. And has 
he got any cocktails ?" 

Nora: ' ' He'sgot the whole bottle full of them yet." 

Miss Ramsey: "Full yet?" 

Nora: "You wouldn't let him offer them to the 
gentlemen he had to lunch, last week, because 
you said — " 

Miss Ramsey: "What did I say?" 

Nora: "They were vulgar." 

Miss Ramsey: "And so they are. And so much 
the better! Bring the cigarettes and the bottle 
and some glasses here, Nora, and then ask Mr. 
Ashley to come." She walks away to the window, 
and hurriedly hums a musical comedy waltz, not 
quite in tune, as from not remembering exactly, 
and after Nora has tinkled in with a tray of glasses 
she lights a cigarette and stands puffing it, gasp- 
ing and coughing a little, as Walter Ashley enters. 
"Oh, Mr. Ashley! Sorry to make you wait." 

v 

MR. ASHLEY, MISS RAMSEY 

Mr. Ashley: "The time has seemed long, but I 
could have waited all day. I couldn't have gone 

298 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

without seeing you, and telling you — " He 
pauses, as if bewildered at the spectacle of Miss 
Ramsey's resolute practice with the cigarette, 
which she now takes from her lips and waves be- 
fore her face with innocent recklessness. 

Miss Ramsey , chokingly: "Do sit down." She 
drops into an easy-chair beside the tea-table, and 
stretches the tips of her feet out beyond the hem 
of her skirt in extremely lady-like abandon. 
"Have a cigarette." She reaches the box to 
him. 

Ashley: "Thank you. I won't smoke, I be- 
lieve." He stands frowning, while she throws her 
cigarette into a teacup and lights another. 

Miss Ramsey: "I thought everybody smoked. 
Then have a cocktail." 

Ashley: "A what?" 

Miss Ramsey: "A cocktail. So many people 
like them with their tea, instead of rum, you 
know." 

Ashley: "No, I didn't know." He regards her 
with amaze, rapidly hardening into condemnation. 

Miss Ramsey: "I hope you don't object to 
smoking. Englishwomen all smoke." 

Ashley: "I think I've heard. I didn't know 
that American ladies did." 

Miss Ramsey: "They don't, all. But they 
will when they find how nice it is." 

299 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Ashley: "And do Englishwomen all drink cock- 
tails ?" 

Miss Ramsey: "They will when they find how 
nice it is. But why do you keep standing? Sit 
down, if it's only for a moment. There is some- 
thing I would like to talk with you about. What 
were you saying when you came in? I didn't 
catch it quite." 

Ashley: "Nothing — now — " 

Miss Ramsey: "And I can't persuade you to 
have a cocktail? I believe I'll have another my- 
self." She takes up the bottle, and tries several 
times to pour from it. "I do believe Nora's for- 
gotten to open it! That is a good joke on me. 
But I mustn't let her know. Do you happen to 
have a pocket-corkscrew with you, Mr. Ashley?" 

Ashley: "No—" 

Miss Ramsey: "Well, never mind." She tosses 
her cigarette into the grate, and lights another. 
"I wonder why they always have cynical persons 
smoke, on the stage? I don't see that the two 
things necessarily go together, but it does give 
you a kind of thrill when they strike a match, 
and it lights up their faces when they put it 
to the cigarette. You know something good and 
wicked is going to happen." She puffs violently 
at her cigarette, and then suddenly flings it 
away and starts to her feet. "Will you — would 

300 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

you — open the window ?" She collapses into her 
chair. 

Ashley, springing toward her: "Miss Ramsey, 
are you — you are ill ! ' * 

Miss Ramsey: ' ' No, no ! The window ! A little 
faint — it's so close — There, it's all right now. 
Or it will be — when — I've had — another cigarette." 
She leans forward to take one; Ashley gravely 
watches her, but says nothing. She lights her 
cigarette, but, without smoking, throws it away. 
"Go on." 

Ashley: "I wasn't saying anything!" 

Miss Ramsey: "Oh, I forgot. And I don't 
know what we were talking about myself." She 
falls limply back into her chair and closes her 
eyes. 

Ashley: " Sha'n't I ring for the maid ? I'm 
afraid—" 

Miss Ramsey, imperiously: "Not at all. Not 
on any account." Far less imperiously: "You 
may pour me a cup of tea if you like. That will 
make me well. The full strength, please." She 
motions away the hot-water jug with which he 
has proposed qualifying the cup of tea which he 
offers her. 

Ashley: "One lump or two?" 

Miss Ramsey: "Only one, thank you." She 
takes the cup. 

301 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Ashley, offering the milk: " Cream ?" 

Miss Ramsey: "A drop." He stands anxiously 
beside her while she takes a long draught and 
then gives back the cup. "That was perfect." 

Ashley: "Another?" 

Miss Ramsey: "No, that is just right. Now 
go on. Or, I forgot. You were not going 
on. Oh dear! How much better I feel. There 
must have been something poisonous in those 
cigarettes." 

Ashley: "Yes, there was tobacco." 

Miss Ramsey: "Oh, do you think it was the 
tobacco? Do throw the whole box into the fire! 
I shall tell Bob never to get cigarettes with 
tobacco in them after this. Won't you have one 
of the chocolates? Or a mallow? I feel as if I 
should never want to eat anything again. Where 
was I?" She rests her cheek against the side of 
her chair cushion, and speaks with closed eyes, in 
a weak murmur. Mr. Ashley watches her at 
first with anxiety, then with a gradual change of 
countenance until a gleam of intelligence steals 
into his look of compassion. 

Ashley: "You asked me to throw the cigarettes 
into the fire. But I want you to let me keep 
them." 

Miss Ramsey, with wide-flung eyes: "You? 
You said you wouldn't smoke." 

302 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Ashley, laughing: "May I change my mind? 
One talks better/ * He lights a cigarette. "And, 
Miss Ramsey, I believe I will have a cocktail, 
after all." 

Miss Ramsey: "Mr. Ashley !" 

Ashley, without noting her protest: "I had for- 
gotten that I had a corkscrew in my pocket-knife. 
Don't trouble yourself to ring for one." He pro- 
duces the knife and opens the bottle; then, as 
Miss Ramsey rises and stands aghast, he pours 
out a glass and offers it to her, with mock devo- 
tion. As she shakes her head and recoils: "Oh! 
I thought you liked cocktails. They are very 
good after cigarettes — very reviving. But if you 
won't — " He tosses off the cocktail and sets 
down the glass, smacking his lips. "Tell your 
brother I commend his taste— in cocktails and" 
— puffing his cigarette — "tobacco. Poison for 
poison, let me offer you one of my cigarettes. 
They're milder than these." He puts his hand 
to his breast pocket. 

Miss Ramsey, with nervous shrinking: "No — " 

Ashley: "It's just as well. I find that I hadn't 
brought mine with me." After a moment: "You 
are so unconventional, so fearless, that I should 
like your notion of the problem in a book I've 
just been reading. Why should the mere fact 
that a man is married to one woman prevent his 

303 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

being in love with another, or half a dozen others; 
or vice versa? 19 

Miss Ramsey: "Mr. Ashley, do you wish to in- 
sult me?" 

Ashley: "Dear me, no! But put the case a 
little differently. Suppose a couple are merely 
engaged. Does that fact imply that neither has 
a right to a change of mind, or to be fancy free 
to make another choice ?" 

Miss Ramsey, indignantly: "Yes, it does. They 
are as sacredly bound to each other as if they 
were married, and if they are false to each other 
the girl is a wretch, and the man is a villain ! And 
if you think anything I have said can excuse you 
for breaking your engagement, or that I don't 
consider you the wickedest person in the world, 
and the most barefaced hypocrite, and — and — I 
don't know what — you are very much mistaken." 

Ashley: "What in the world are you talking 
about?" 

Miss Ramsey: " I am talking about you and 
your shameless perfidy." 

Ashley: "My shameless perf — I don't under- 
stand! I came here to tell you that I love you — " 

Miss Ramsey: "How dare you! To speak to 
me of that, when — Or perhaps you have broken 
with her, and think you are free to hoodwink some 
other poor creature. But you will find that you 

304 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

have chosen the wrong person. And it's no ex- 
cuse for you her being a little — a little — not so 
bright as some girls, and not so good-looking. 
Oh, it's enough to make any girl loathe her own 
looks! You mustn't suppose you can come here 
red-handed — yes, it's the same as a murder, and 
any true girl would say so — and tell me you care 
for me. No, Walter Ashley, I haven't fallen so 
low as that, though I have the disgrace of your 
acquaintance. And I hope — I hope — if you don't 
like my smoking, and offering you cocktails, and 
talking the way I have, it will be a lesson to you. 
And yes! — I will say it! If it will add to your 
misery to know that I did respect you very much, 
and thought everything — very highly — of you, 
and might have answered you very differently 
before, when you were free to tell me that — now I 
have nothing but the utmost abhorrence — and — 
disapproval of you. And — and — Oh, I don't 
see how you can be so hateful!" She hides her 
face in her hands and rushes from the room, over- 
turning several chairs in her course toward the 
door. Ashley remains staring after her, while a 
succession of impetuous rings make themselves 
heard from the street door. There is a sound of 
opening it, and then a flutter of skirts and anxi- 
eties, and Miss Garnett comes running into the 
room. 

20 305 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

VI 
MISS GARNETT, MR. ASHLEY 

Miss Garnett, to the maid hovering in the door- 
way: "Yes, I must have left it here, for I never 
missed it till I went to pay my fare in the motor- 
bus, and tried to think whether I had the exact 
dime, and if I hadn't whether the conductor would 
change a five-dollar bill or not, and then it rushed 
into my mind that I had left my purse somewhere, 
and I knew I hadn't been anywhere else." She 
runs from the mantel to the writing-desk in the 
corner, and then to the sofa, where, peering under 
the tea-table, she finds her purse on the shelf. 
"Oh, here it is, Nora, just where I put it when 
we began to talk, and I must have gone out and 
left it. I — " She starts with a little shriek, in 
encountering Ashley. "Oh, Mr. Ashley! What 
a fright you gave me ! I was just looking for my 
purse that I missed when I went to pay my fare 
in the motor-bus, and was wondering whether I 
had the exact dime, or the conductor could change 
a five-dollar bill, and — M She discovers, or af- 
fects to discover, something strange in his man- 
ner. "What— what is the matter, Mr. Ashley ?" 

Ashley: "I shall be glad to have you tell me— 
or any one." 

306 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Garnett: "I don't understand. Has Iso- 
bel— " 

Ashley: "Miss Garnett, did you know I was 
engaged ?" 

Miss Garnett: "Why, yes; I was just going to 
congrat — " 

Ashley: "Well, don't, unless you can tell me 
whom I am engaged to." 

Miss Garnett: "Why, aren't you engaged to 
Emily Pray?" 

Ashley: "Not the least in the world." 

Miss Garnett , in despair: "Then what have I 
done? Oh, what a fatal, fatal scrape!" With a 
ray of returning hope: "But she told me herself 
that she was engaged ! And you were together so 
much, last summer!" Desperately: "Then if she 
isn't engaged to you, whom is she engaged to?" 

Ashley: "On general principles, I shouldn't 
know, but in this particular instance I happen 
to know that she is engaged to Owen Brooks. 
They were a great deal more together last sum- 
mer." 

Miss Garnett y with conviction: "So they were!" 
With returning doubt: "But why didn't she say 
so?" 

Ashley: "I can't tell you; she may have had 
her reasons, or she may not. Can you possibly 
tell me, in return for my ignorance, why the fact 

307 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

of her engagement should involve me in the 
strange way it seems to have done with Miss 
Ramsey ?" 

Miss Garnett, with a burst of involuntary can- 
dor: "Why, / did that. Or, no! What's she 
been doing ?" 

Ashley: "Really, Miss Garnett— " 

Miss Garnett: "How can I tell you anything, if 
you don't tell me everything? You wouldn't wish 
me to betray confidence ?" 

Ashley: "No, certainly not. What was the 
confidence ?" 

Miss Garnett: "Well — But I shall have to 
know first what she's been doing. You must see 
that yourself, Mr. Ashley." He is silent. "Has 
she — has Isobel — been behaving — well, out of 
character?" 

Ashley: "Very much indeed." 

Miss Garnett: "I expected she would." She 
fetches a thoughtful sigh, and for her greater 
emotional convenience she sinks into an easy- 
chair and leans forward. "Oh dear! It is a 
scrape." Suddenly and imperatively: "Tell me 
exactly what she did, if you hope for any help 
whatever." 

Ashley: "Why, she offered me a cocktail — " 

Miss Garnett: "Oh, how good! I didn't sup- 
pose she would dare! Well?" 

308 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Ashley: "And she smoked cigarettes — " 

Miss Garnett: "How perfectly divine! And 
what else?" 

Ashley, coldly: "May I ask why you admire 
Miss Ramsey's behaving out of character so much? 
I think the smoking made her rather faint, and — M 

Miss Garnett: "She would have let it kill her! 
Never tell me that girls have no moral courage !" 

Ashley: "But what — what was the meaning of 
it all?" 

Miss Garnett, thoughtfully : "I suppose if I got 
her in for it, I ought to get her out, even if I be- 
tray confidence/ ' 

Ashley: " It depends upon the confidence. What 
is it?" 

Miss Garnett: "Why — But you're sure it's my 
duty?" 

Ashley: "If you care what I think of her — " 

Miss Garnett: "Oh, Mr. Ashley, you mustn't 
think it strange of Isobel, on my bended knees 
you mustn't! Why, don't you see? She was just 
doing it to disgust you!" 

Ashley: "Disgust me?" 

Miss Garnett: "Yes, and drive you back to 
Emily Fray." 

Ashley: "Drive me ba — " 

Miss Garnett: "If she thought you were en- 
gaged to Emily, when you were coming here all 

309 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

the time, and she wasn't quite sure that she hated 
to have you, don't you see it would be her duty 
to sacrifice herself, and — Oh, I suppose she's 
heard everything up there, and — " She catches 
herself up and runs out *of the room, leaving 
Ashley to await the retarded descent of skirts 
which he hears on the stairs after the crash of 
the street door has announced Miss Garnett's es- 
cape. He stands with his back to the mantel, 
and faces Miss Ramsey as she enters the room. 

VII 
MISS RAMSEY, ASHLEY 

Miss Ramsey, with the effect of cold surprise : 
' ' Mr. Ashley ? I thought I heard — Wasn't Miss 
Garnett— " 

Ashley: "She was. Did you think it was the 
street door closing on meV 

Miss Ramsey: "How should I know?" Then, 
courageously: "No, I didn't think it was. Why 
do you ask?" She moves uneasily about the 
room, with an air of studied inattention. 

Ashley: "Because if you did, I can put you in 
the right, though I can't restore Miss Garnett's 
presence by my absence." 

Miss Ramsey: "You're rather— enigmatical." 
A ring is heard; the maid pauses at the doorway. 

310 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

'Tffl not at home, Nora." To Mr. Ashley: "It 
seems to be very close — " 

Ashley: "It's my having been smoking." 

Miss Ramsey: "Your having?" She goes to 
the window and tries to lift it. 

Ashley: "Let me." He follows her to the win- 
dow, where he stands beside her. 

Miss Ramsey: "Now, she's seen me! And you 
here with me. Of course — -" 

Ashley: "I shouldn't mind. But I'm so sorry 
if — and I will go." 

Miss Ramsey: "You can't go now — till she's 
round the corner. She'll keep looking back, and 
she'll think I made you." 

Ashley: "But haven't you? Aren't you send- 
ing me back to Miss Fray to tell her that I must 
keep my engagement, though I care nothing for 
her, and care all the world for you? Isn't that 
what you want me to do?" 

Miss Ramsey: "But you're not engaged to her! 
You just—" 

Ashley: "Just what?" 

Miss Ramsey, desperately: "You wish me to 
disgrace myself forever in your eyes. Well, I 
will; what does it matter now? I heard you 
telling Esther you were not engaged. I overheard 
you." 

Ashley: "I fancied you must." 
311 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey: "I tried to overhear! I eaves- 
dropped! I wish you to know that." 

Ashley: "And what do you wish me to do 
about it?" 

Miss Ramsey: "I should think any self-respect- 
ing person would know. I'm not sl self-respecting 
person." Her wandering gaze seems to fall for 
the first time upon the tray with the cocktails 
and glasses and cigarettes; she flies at the bell- 
button and presses it impetuously. As the maid 
appears: "Take these things away, Nora, please!" 
To Ashley when the maid has left the room: 
"Don't be afraid to say what you think of me!" 

Ashley: "I think all the world of you. But I 
should merely like to ask — " 

Miss Ramsey: "Oh, you can ask anything of 
me now!" 

Ashley, with palpable insincerity: "I should 
like to ask why you don't respect yourself?" 

Miss Ramsey: "Was that what you were going 
to ask? I know it wasn't. But I will tell you. 
Because I have been a fool." 

Ashley. "Thank you. Now I will tell you 
what I was really going to ask. Why did you wish 
to drive me back to Miss Fray when you knew 
that I would be false to her a thousand times 
if I could only once be true to you?" 

Miss Ramsey: "Now you are insulting me! 
312 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

And that is just the point. You may be a very 
clever lawyer, Mr. Ashley, and everybody says 
you are — very able, and talented, and all that, 
but you can't get round that point. You may 
torture any meaning you please out of my words, 
but I shall always say you brought it on yourself." 

Ashley: " Brought what on?" 

Miss Ramsey: "Mr. Ashley! I won't be cross- 
questioned." 

Ashley: "Was that why you smoked, and 
poured cocktails out of an unopened bottle ? Was 
it because you wished me to hate you, and re- 
member my duty, and go back to Miss Fray? 
Well, it was a dead failure. It made me love you 
more than ever. I am a fool too, as you call it." 

Miss Ramsey: "Say anything you please. I 
have given you the right. I shall not resent it. 
Go on." 

Ashley: "I should only repeat myself. You 
must have known how much I care for you, 
Isobel. Do you mind my calling you Isobel?" 

Miss Ramsey: "Not in the least if you wish to 
humiliate me by it. I should like you to trample 
on me in every way you can." 

Ashley: "Trample on you? I would rather be 
run over by a steam-roller than tread on the least 
of your outlying feelings, dearest. Do you mind 
my saying dearest?" 

313 



SELF-SACRIFICE : A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey: "I have told you that you can 
say anything you like. I deserve it* But oh, if 
you have a spark of pity — " 

Ashley: "I'm a perfect conflagration of com- 
passion, darling. Do you object to darling ?" 

Miss Ramsey, with starting tears: "It doesn't 
matter now." She has let her lovely length trail 
into the corner of the sofa, where she desperately 
reclines, supporting her elbow on the arm of it, 
and resting her drooping head on her hand. He 
draws a hassock up in front of her, and sits on it. 

Ashley: "This represents kneeling at your feet. 
One doesn't do it literally any more, you know." 

Miss Ramsey, in a hollow voice: "I should 
despise you if you did, and" — deeply mur- 
murous — "I don't wish to despise you." 

Ashley: "No, I understand that. You merely 
wish me to despise you. But why?" 

Miss Ramsey, nervously : ' * You know. ' ' 

Ashley: "But I don't know — Isobel, dearest, 
darling, if you will allow me to express myself so 
fully. How should I know?" 

Miss Ramsey: "I've told you." 

Ashley: "May I take your hand? For good- 
by!" He possesses himself of it. "It seems to 
go along with those expressions." 

Miss Ramsey, self -contemptuously : " Oh yes." 

Ashley: "Thank you. Where were we?" 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Miss Ramsey y sitting up and recovering her 
hand: "You were saying good-by — " 

Ashley: "Was I? But not before I had told 
you that I knew you were doing all that for my 
best good, and I wish — I wish you could have seen 
how exemplary you looked when you were trying 
to pour a cocktail out of a corked bottle, between 
your remarks on passionate fiction and puffs of the 
insidious cigarette! When the venomous tobacco 
began to get in its deadly work, and you turned 
pale and reeled a little, and called for air, it made 
me mentally vow to go back to Miss Fray in- 
stantly, whether I was engaged to her or not, and 
cut out poor old Brooks — " 

Miss Ramsey: "Was it Mr. Brooks? I didn't 
hear the name exactly." 

Ashley: "When I was telling Miss Garnett? I 
ought to have spoken louder, but I wasn't sure at 
the time you were listening. Though as you were 
saying, what does it matter now?" 

Miss Ramsey: "Did I say that?" 

Ashley: "Words to that effect. And they have 
made me feel how unworthy of you I am. I'm 
not heroic — by nature. But I could be, if you 
made me — by art — " 

Miss Ramsey, springing to her feet indignantly: 
"Now, you are ridiculing me — you are making 
fun of me." 

3*5 



SELF-SACRIFICE: A FARCE-TRAGEDY 

Ashley, gathering himself up from his hassock 
with difficulty, and confronting her: "Do I look 
like a man who would dare to make fun of you? 
I am half a head shorter than you, and in moral 
grandeur you overtop me so that I would always 
have to wear a high hat when I was with you." 

Miss Ramsey, thoughtfully: "Plenty of girls 
are that way, now. But if you are ashamed of 
my being tall — " Flashingly, and with starting 
tears. 

Ashley: "Ashamed! I can always look up to 
you, you can always stoop to me!" He stretches 
his arms toward her. 

Miss Ramsey, recoiling bewildered : ' * Wait ! We 
haven't got to that yet." 

Ashley: "Oh, Isobel — dearest — darling! WeVe 
got past it! We're on the home stretch, now," 



THE NIGHT BEFORE 
CHRISTMAS 



XIX 
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

A MORALITY 



MR. AND MRS. CLARENCE FOUNTAIN 

A/[RS. CLARENCE FOUNTAIN, backing into 
■* ■* the room, and closing the door noiselessly 
before looking round: "Oh, you poor thing! I 
can see that you are dead, at the first glance. I'm 
dead myself, for that matter.' ' She is speaking 
to her husband, who clings with one hand to the 
chimney-piece, and supports his back with the 
other; from this hand a little girl's long stocking 
lumpily dangles; Mrs. Fountain, turning round, 
observes it. "Not finished yet? But I don't 
wonder! I wonder you've even begun. Well, 
now, I will take hold with you." In token of the 
aid she is going to give, Mrs. Fountain sinks into 
a chair and rolls a distracted eye over the littered 
and tumbled room. "It's worse than I thought it 

319 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

would be. You ought to have smoothed the 
papers out and laid them in a pile as fast as you 
unwrapped the things; that is the way I always 
do; and wound the strings up and put them one 
side. Then you wouldn't have had to wade round 
in them. I suppose I oughtn't to have left it to 
you, but if I had let you put the children to bed 
you know you'd have told them stories and kept 
them all night over their prayers. And as it was 
each of them wanted to put in a special Christmas 
clause; I know what kind of Christmas clause I 
should have put in if I'd been frank! I'm not 
sure it's right to keep up the deception. One 
comfort, the oldest ones don't believe in it any 
more than we do. Dear ! I did think at one 
time this afternoon I should have to be brought 
home in an ambulance; it would have been a 
convenience, with all the packages. I simply 
marvel at their delivery wagons getting them 
here." 

Fountain, coming to the table, where she sits, 
and taking up one of the toys with which it is 
strewn: "They haven't all of them." 

Mrs. Fountain: "What do you mean by all of 
them?" 

Fountain: "I mean half." He takes up a me- 
chanical locomotive and stuffs it into the stock- 
ing he holds. 

320 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Mrs. Fountain, staying his hand: "What are 
you doing? Putting Jimmy's engine into Susy's 
stocking! She'll be perfectly insulted when she 
finds it, for she'll know you weren't paying the 
least attention, and you can't blame Santa Claus 
for it with her. If that's what you've been doing 
with the other stockings — But there aren't any 
others. Don't tell me you've just begun! Well, 
I could simply cry." 

Fountain, dropping into the chair on the other 
side of the table, under the shelter of a tall Christ- 
mas tree standing on it : ' ' Do you call unwrapping 
a whole car-load of truck and getting it sorted, 
just beginning? I've been slaving here from the 
dawn of time, and I had to have some leisure for 
the ghosts of my own Christmases when I was 
little. I didn't have to wade round in the wrap- 
pings of my presents in those days. But it isn't 
the sad memories that take it out of you; it's the 
happy ones. I've never had a ghastlier half -hour 
than I've just spent in the humiliating multiplicity 
of these gifts. All the old birthdays and wedding- 
days and Fourth of Julys and home-comings and 
children's christenings I've ever had came troop- 
ing back. There oughtn't to be any gay anniver- 
saries; they should be forbidden by law. If I 
could only have recalled a few dangerous fevers 
and funerals!" 

21 321 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Mrs. Fountain: M Clarence! Don't say such a 
thing ; you'll be punished for it. I know how you 
suffer from those gloomy feelings, and I pity you. 
You ought to bear up against them. If I gave 
way! You must think about something cheerful in 
the future when the happiness of the past afflicts 
you, and set one against the other; life isn't all a 
vale of tears. You must keep your mind fixed on 
the work before you. I don't believe it's the 
number of the packages here that's broken you 
down. It's the shopping that's worn you out; 
I'm sure I'm a mere thread. And I had been at 
it from immediately after breakfast; and I lunched 
in one of the stores with ten thousand suburbans 
who had come pouring in with the first of their un- 
natural trains: I did hope I should have some of 
the places to myself; but they were every one 
jammed. And you came up from your office about 
four, perfectly fresh." 

Fountain: u Fresh! Yes, quite dewy from a 
day's fight with the beasts at Ephesus on the eve 
of Christmas week." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, don't be cynical, Clar- 
ence, on this, of all nights of the year. You know 
how sorry I always am for what you have to go 
through down there, and I suppose it's worse, as 
you say, at this season than any other time of 
year. It's the terrible concentration of every- 

322 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

thing just before Christmas that makes it so kill- 
ing. I really don't know which of the places was 
the worst ; the big department stores or the sepa- 
rate places for jewelry and toys and books and 
stationery and antiques ; they were all alike, and 
all maddening. And the rain outside, and every- 
body coming in reeking; though I don't believe 
that sunshine would have been any better; there'd 
have been more of them. I declare, it made my 
heart ache for those poor creatures behind the 
counters, and I don't know whether I suffered 
most for them when they kept up a ghastly cheer- 
fulness in their attention or were simply insulting 
in their indifference. I know they must be all 
dead by this time. 'Going up?' 'Going down?' 
'Ca-ish!' 'Here, boy!' I believe it will ring in 
my ears as long as I live. And the whiz of those 
overhead wire things, and having to wait ages 
for your change, and then drag your tatters out 
of the stores into the streets! If I hadn't had you 
with me at the last I should certainly have 
dropped." 

Fountain: "Yes, and what had become of your 
good resolutions about doing all your Christmas 
shopping in July?" 

Mrs. Fountain: ' ' My good resolutions ? Really, 
Clarence, sometimes if it were not cruelty to 
animals I should like to hit you. My good — 

323 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

You know that you suggested that plan, and it 
wasn't even original with you. The papers have 
been talking about it for years; but when you 
brought it up as such a new idea, I fell in with it 
to please you — " 

Fountain: "Now, look out, Lucy!" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Yes, to please you, and to 
help you forget the Christmas worry, just as I've 
been doing to-night. You never spare me" 

Fountain: "Stick to the record. Why didn't 
you do your Christmas shopping in July?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Why didn't I? Did you ex- 
pect me to do my Christmas shopping down at 
Sculpin Beach, where I spent the whole time from 
the middle of June till the middle of September? 
Why didn't you do the Christmas shopping in 
July? You had the stores under your nose here 
from the beginning till the end of summer, with 
nothing in the world to hinder you, and not a 
chick or a child to look after." 

Fountain: "Oh, I like that. You think I was 
leading a life of complete leisure here, with the 
thermometer among the nineties nine-tenths of 
the time?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "I only know you were brag- 
ging in all your letters about your bath and your 
club, and the folly of any one going away from the 
cool, comfortable town in the summer. I sup- 

324 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

pose you'll say that was to keep me from feeling 
badly at leaving you. When it was only for the 
children's sake! I will let you take them the next 
time." 

Fountain: " While you look after my office? 
And you think the stores are full of Christmas 
things in July, I suppose." 

Mrs. Fountain: "I never thought so; and now 
I hope you see the folly of that idea. No, Clar- 
ence. We must be logical in everything. You 
can't get rid of Christmas shopping at Christmas- 
time." 

Fountain, shouting wrathfully : "Then I say get 
rid of Christmas!" 

ii 

MR. FRANK WATKINS, MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Watkins, opening the door for himself and 
struggling into the room with an armful of parcels : 
"I'm with you there, Clarence. Christmas is at 
the root of Christmas shopping, and Christmas 
giving, and all the rest of it. Oh, you needn't be 
afraid, Lucy. I didn't hear any epithets; just 
caught the drift of your argument through the 
keyhole. I've been kicking at the door ever 
since you began. Where shall I dump these 
things?" 

325 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Mrs. Fountain: "Oh, you poor boy! Here — 
anywhere — on the floor — on the sofa — on the 
table.' * She clears several spaces and helps Wat- 
kins unload. "Clarence! I'm surprised at you. 
What are you thinking of?" 

Fountain: "I'm thinking that if this goes on, 
I'll let somebody else arrange the presents." 

Watkins: ' ' If I saw a man coming into my house 
with a load like this to-night, I'd throw him into 
the street. But living in a ninth-story flat like 
you, it might hurt him." 

Mrs. Fountain, reading the inscriptions on the 
packages: "'For Benny from his uncle Prank.' 
Oh, how sweet of you, Prank! And here's a kiss 
for his uncle Frank." She embraces him with as 
little interruption as possible. "'Prom Uncle 
Frank to Jim.' Oh, I know what that is!" She 
feels the package over. "And this is for ' Susy from 
her aunt Sue.' Oh, I knew she would remember 
her namesake. 'For Maggie. Merry Christmas 
from Mrs. Watkins.' 'Bridget, with Mrs. Wat- 
kins's best wishes for a Merry Christmas.' Both 
the girls! But it's like Sue; she never forgets 
anybody. And what's this for Clarence? I must 
know! Not a bath-gown?" Undoing it: "I 
simply must see it. Blue! His very color!" 
Holding it up: "From you, Frank?" He nods. 
"Clarence!" 

326 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Watkins: "If Fountain tries to kiss me, I'll — " 

Fountain: "I wouldn't kiss you for a dozen 
bath-gowns." Lifting it up from the floor where 
Mrs. Fountain has dropped it : l ' It is rather nice. ' ' 

Watkins: "Don't overwhelm me." 

Mrs. Fountain, dancing about with a long, soft 
roll in her hand: "Oh, oh, oh! She saw me gloat- 
ing on it at Shumaker's! I do wonder if it is." 

Fountain, reaching for it: "Why, open it — " 

Mrs. Fountain: "You dare! No, it shall be 
opened the very last thing in the morning, now, to 
punish you ! How is poor Sue ? I saw her literally 
dropping by the way at Shumaker's." 

Watkins, making for the door: "Well, she must 
have got up again. I left her registering a vow 
that if ever she lived to see another Christmas she 
would leave the country months before the shop- 
ping began. She called down maledictions on all 
the recipients of her gifts and wished them the 
worst harm that can befall the wicked." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Poor Sue! She simply lives 
to do people good, and I can understand exactly 
how she feels toward them. I'll be round bright 
and early to-morrow to thank her. Why do you 
go?" 

Watkins: "Well, I can't stay here all night, and 
I'd better let you and Clarence finish up." He 
escapes from her detaining embrace and runs out, 

327 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

in 

MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Mrs. Fountain, intent upon her roll: "How 
funny he is! I wonder if he did hear anything 
but our scolding voices? Where were we?" 

Fountain: "I had just called you a serpent." 

Mrs. Fountain , with amusement: "No, really?" 
Feeling the parcel: "If it's that Spanish lace scarf 
I can tell her it was machine lace. I saw it at the 
first glance. But poor Sue has no taste. I sup- 
pose I must stand it. But I can't bear to think 
what she's given the girls and children. She 
means well. Did you really say serpent, Clar- 
ence? You never called me just that before." 

Fountain: "No, but you called me a laughing 
hyena, and said I scoffed at everything sacred." 

Mrs. Fountain: "I can't remember using the 
word hyena, exactly, though I do think the way 
you talk about Christmas is dreadful. But I take 
back the laughing hyena." 

Fountain: "And I take back the serpent. I 
meant dove, anyway. But it's this Christmas- 
time when a man gets so tired he doesn't know 
what he's saying." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, you 1 re good, anyway, 
dearest, whatever you say; and now I'm going to 

328 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

help you arrange the things. I suppose there'll be 
lots more to-morrow, but we must get rid of these 
now. Don't you wish nobody would do anything 
for us? Just the children — dear little souls! I 
don't believe but what we can make Jim and Susy 
believe in Santa Claus again; Benny is firm in 
the faith; he put him into his prayer. I declare, 
his sweetness almost broke my heart/ ' At a 
knock: "Who's that, I wonder? Come in! Oh, 
it's you, Maggie. Well?" 

IV 

THE FOUNTAINS, FOUNTAIN'S SISTERS 

Maggie: "It's Mr. Fountain's sisters just tele- 
phoned up." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Have them come up at once, 
Maggie, of course." As Maggie goes out: "An- 
other interruption! If it's going to keep on like 
this! Shouldn't you have thought they might 
have sent their presents?" 

Fountain: "I thought something like it in 
Frank's case; but I didn't say it." 

Mrs. Fountain: "And I don't know why I say 
it, now. It's because I'm so tired I don't know 
what I am saying. Do forgive me! It's this ter- 
rible Christmas spirit that gets into me. But now 
you'll see how nice I can be to them." At a tap 

329 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTxMAS 

on the door: ''Come in! Come in! Don't mind 
our being in all this mess. So darling of you to 
come! You can help cheer Clarence up; you 
know his Christmas Eve dumps/ ' She runs to 
them and clasps them in her arms with several 
half -open packages dangling from her hands and 
contrasting their disarray with the neatness of 
their silk-ribboned and tissue-papered parcels 
which their embrace makes meet at her back. 
11 Minnie! Aggie! To lug here, when you ought 
to be at home in bed dying of fatigue! But it's 
just like you, both of you. Did you ever see any- 
thing like the stores to-day? Do sit down, or 
swoon on the floor, or anything. Let me have 
those wretched bundles which are simply killing 
you. s ' She looks at the different packages. - ' ' For 
Benny from Grandpa/ 'For a good girl, from 
Susy's grandmother.' 'Jim, from Aunt Minnie 
and Aunt Aggie.' 'Lucy, with love from Aggie 
and Minnie.' And Clarence! What hearts you 
have got ! Well, I always say there never were such 
thoughtful girls, and you always show such taste 
and such originality. I long to get at the things." 
She keeps fingering the large bundle marked with 
her husband's name. "Not — not — a — " 

Minnie: "Yes, a bath-robe. Unless you give 
him a cigar-case it's about the only thing you can 
give a man." 

33° 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Aggie: "Minnie thought of it and I chose it. 
Blue, because it's his color. Try it on, Clarence, 
and if it's too long — M 

Mrs. Fountain: "Yes, do, dear! Let's see you 
with it on." While the girls are fussily opening 
the robe, she manages to push her brother's gift 
behind the door. Then, without looking round 
at her husband. "It isn't a bit too long. Just 
the very — " Looking: "Well, it can easily be 
taken up at the hem. I can do it to-morrow." 
She abandons him to his awkward isolation while 
she chatters on with his sisters. "Sit down; I 
insist! Don't think of going. Did you see that 
frightful pack of people when the cab horse fell 
down in front of Shumaker's?" 

Minnie: "See it?" 

Aggie- "We were in the midst of it! I wonder 
we ever got out alive. It's enough to make you 
wish never to see another Christmas as long as 
you live." 

Minnie: "A great many won't live. There will 
be more grippe, and more pneumonia, and more 
appendicitis from those jams of people in the 
stores!" 

Aggie: "The germs must have been swarm- 
mg. 

Fountain: "Lucy was black with them when 
we got home." 

33i - 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Mrs. Fountain: " Don't pay the slightest atten- 
tion to him, girls. He'll probably be the first to 
sneeze himself/ ' 

Minnie: "I don't know about sneezing. I shall 
only be too glad if I don't have nervous prostra- 
tion from it." 

Aggie: "I'm 'glad we got our motor-car just in 
time. Any one that goes in the trolleys now will 
take their life in their hand." The girls rise and 
move toward the door. "Well, we must goon 
now. We're making a regular round; you can't 
trust the delivery wagons at a time like this. 
Good-by. Merry Christmas to the children. 
They're fast asleep by this time, I suppose." 

Minnie: "I only wish I was!" 

Mrs. Fountain: "I believe you, Minnie. Good- 
by. Good night. Good night, Aggie. Clarence, 
go to the elevator with them! Or no, he can't 
in that ridiculous bath-gown ! " Turning to 
Fountain as the door closes: "Now I've done it." 



v 

MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Fountain: "It isn't a thing you could have 
wished to phrase that way, exactly." 

Mrs. Fountain: "And you made me do it. 
332 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Never thanking them, or anything, and standing 
there like I don't know what, and leaving the talk 
all to me. And now, making me lose my temper 
again, when I wanted to be so nice to you. Well, 
it is no use trying, and from this on I won't. 
Clarence!" She has opened the parcel addressed 
to herself and now stands transfixed with joy and 
wonder. "See what the girls have given me! 
The very necklace I've been longing for at Planets', 
and denying myself for the last fortnight! Well, 
never will I say your sisters are mean again." 

Fountain: "You ought to have said that to 
them." 

Mrs. Fountain: "It quite reconciles one to 
Christmas. What? Oh, that was rather nasty. 
You know I didn't mean it. I was so excited I 
didn't know what I was saying. I'm sure nobody 
ever got on better with sisters-in-law, and that 
shows my tact; if I do make a slip, now and then, 
I can always get out of it. They will understand. 
Do you think it was very nice of them to flaunt 
their new motor in my face? But of course any- 
thing your family does is perfect, and always was, 
though I must say this necklace is sweet of them. 
I wonder they had the taste." A tap on the door 
is heard. "Come in, Maggie!" Sottovoce. "Take 
it off." She snatches his bath-robe and tosses it 
behind the door. 

333 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

VI 
WILBUR HAZARD, THE FOUNTAINS 

Hazard: "I suppose I can come in, even if I'm 
not Maggie. Catch, Fountain." He tosses a 
large bundle to Fountain. "It's huge, but it 
isn't hefty." He turns to go out again. 

Mrs. Fountain: l l Oh, oh, oh ! Don't go ! Come 
in and help us. What have you brought Clarence ! 
May I feel?" 

Hazard: "You can look, if you like. I'm rather 
proud of it. There's only one other thing you 
can give a man, and I said, 'No, not a cigar-case. 
Fountain smokes enough already, but if a bath- 
robe can induce him to wash — '" He goes out. 

Mrs. Fountain, screaming after him through the 
open door: "Oh, how good! Come back and see 
it on him." She throws the bath-robe over Foun- 
tain's shoulders. 

Hazard, looking in again: "Perfect fit, just as 
the Jew said, and the very color for Fountain." 
He vanishes, shutting the door behind him. 

VII 
MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Mrs. Fountain: "How coarse! Well, my dear, 
I don't know where you picked up your bachelor 
friends. I hope this is the last of them." 

334 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Fountain: "Hazard's the only one who has sur- 
vived your rigorous treatment. But he always 
had a passion for cold shoulder, poor fellow. As 
bath-robes go, this isn't bad." He gets his arms 
into it, and walks up and down. "Heigh?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Yes, it is pretty good. But 
the worst of Christmas is that it rouses up all 
your old friends." 

Fountain: "They feel so abnormally good, con- 
found them. I suppose poor old Hazard half 
killed himself looking this thing up and building 
the joke to go with it." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, take it off, now, and 
come help me with the children's presents. You're 
quite forgetting about them, and it '11 be morning 
and you'll have the little wretches swarming in 
before you can turn round. Dear little souls! I 
can sympathize with their impatience, of course. 
But what are you going to do with these bath- 
robes? You can't wear four bath-robes." 

Fountain: "I can change them every day. But 
there ought to be seven. This hood is rather a 
new wrinkle, though, isn't it? I suppose it's for 
a voyage, and you pull it up over your head when 
you come through the corridor back to your state- 
room. We shall have to go to Europe, Lucy." 

Mrs. Fountain: "I would go to Asia, Africa, 
and Oceanica, to escape another Christmas. 

335 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Now if there are any more bath-robes — Come 
in, Maggie/ ' 

VIII 
MAGGIE, THE FOUNTAINS 

Maggie, bringing in a bundle: "Something a 
District Messenger brought. Will you sign for 
it, ma'am?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "You sign, Clarence. If I 
know anything about the look and the feel of a 
bundle, this is another bath-robe, but I shall soon 
see." While she is cutting the string and tearing 
the wrappings away, Fountain signs and Maggie 
goes. Mrs. Fountain shakes out the folds of the 
robe. "Well, upon my word, I should think there 
was conspiracy to insult you, Clarence. I should 
like to know who has had the effrontery — What's 
on it?" 

Fountain, reading from the card which had 
fallen out of the garment to the floor: "'With 
Christmas greetings from Mrs. Arthur J. Gibby.' ' 

Mrs. Fountain, dropping the robe and seizing 
the card: "Mrs. Arthur J. Gibby! Well, upon 
my word, this is impudence. It's not only im- 
pudence, it's indelicacy. And I had always 
thought she was the very embodiment of refine- 
ment, and I've gone about saying so. Now I shall 

336 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

have to take it back. The idea of a lady sending 
a bath-robe to a gentleman! What next, I won- 
der! What right has Mrs. Gibby to send you a 
bath-robe? Don't prevaricate! Remember that 
the truth is the only thing that can save you. 
Matters must have gone pretty far, when a woman 
could send you anything so — intimate. What 
are you staring at with that paper? You needn't 
hope to divert my mind by — " 

Fountain, giving her the paper in which the robe 
came: "Seems to be for Mrs. Clarence Fountain.' ' 

Mrs. Fountain, snatching it from him: "What! 
It is, it is! Oh, poor dear Lilly! How can you 
ever forgive me ? She saw me looking at it to-day 
at Shumaker's, and it must have come into her 
head in despair what else to get me. But it was 
a perfect inspiration— for it was just what I was 
longing for. Why"— laughing hysterically while 
she holds up the robe, and turns it this way and 
that — "I might have seen at a glance that it 
wasn't a man's, with this lace on and this silk 
hood, and" — she hurries into it, and pulls it for- 
ward, looking down at either side — "it's just the 
right length, and if it was made for me it couldn't 
fit me better. What a joke I shall have with 
Lilly, when I tell her about it. I sha'n't spare 
myself a bit!" 

Fountain: "Then I hope you'll spare me. I 

22 337 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

have some little delicacy of feeling, and I don't 
like the notion of a lady's giving me a bath-robe. 
It's — intimate. I don't know where you picked 
up your girl friends." 

Mrs. Fountain, capering about joyfully: "Oh, 
how funny you are, darling! But go on. I don't 
mind it, now. And you may be glad you've got 
off so easily. Only now if there are any more 
bath-robes — " A timid rap is heard at the door. 
''Come in, Maggie!" The door is slowly set ajar, 
then flung suddenly wide open, and Jim and Susy 
in their night-gowns rush dancing and exulting in. 

IX 

JIM, SUSY, THE FOUNTAINS 

Susy: "We've caught you, we've caught you." 

Jim: "I just bet it was you, and now I've won, 
haven't I, mother?" 

Susy: "And I've won, too, haven't I, father?" 
Arrested at sight of her father in the hooded 
bath-gown: "He does look like Santa Claus, 
doesn't he, Jimmy? But the real Santa Claus 
would be all over snow, and a long, white beard. 
You can't fool us!" 

Jim: "You can't fool us! We know you, we 
know you! And mother dressed up, too! There 
isn't any Mrs. Santa Claus, and that proves it!" 

338 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Mrs. Fountain, severely: "Dreadful little 
things! Who said you might come here? Go 
straight back to bed, this minute, or — Will you 
send them back, Clarence, and not stand staring 
so? What are you thinking of?" 

Fountain, dreamily: "Nothing. Merely won- 
dering what we shall do when we've got rid of our 
superstitions. Shall we be the better for it, or 
even the wiser ?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "What put that question into 
your head? Christmas, I suppose; and that's 
another reason for wishing there was no such 
thing. If I had my way, there wouldn't be." 

Jim: "Oh, mother!" 

Susy: "No Christmas?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, not for disobedient chil- 
dren who get out of bed and come in, spoiling 
everything. If you don't go straight back, it will 
be the last time, Santa Claus or no Santa Claus." 

Jim: "And if we go right back?" 

Susy: "And promise not to come in any more?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, we'll see how you keep 
your promise. If you don't, that's the end of 
Christmas in this house." 

Jim: "It's a bargain, then! Come on, Susy!" 

Susy: "And we do it for you, mother. And for 
you, father. We just came in for fun, anyway." 

Jim: "We just came for a surprise." 
339 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Mrs. Fountain, kissing them both: "Well, then, 
if it was only for fun, well excuse you this time. 
Run along, now, that's good children. Clarence!'' 



MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Fountain: "Well?" He looks up at her from 
where he has dropped into a chair beside the table 
strewn with opened and unopened gifts at the foot 
of the Christmas tree. 

Mrs. Fountain: "What are you mooning 
about?" 

Fountain: "What if it was all a fake? Those 
thousands and hundreds of thousands of churches 
that pierce the clouds with their spires; those 
millions of ministers and missionaries; those 
billions of worshipers, sitting and standing and 
kneeling, and singing and praying; those nuns 
and monks, and brotherhoods and sisterhoods, 
with their ideals of self-denial, and their duties 
to the sick and poor; those martyrs that died for 
the one true faith, and those other martyrs of the 
other true faiths whom the one true faith tortured 
and killed; those masses and sermons and cere- 
monies, what if they were all a delusion, a mis- 
take, a misunderstanding? What if it were all 
as unlike the real thing, if there is any real thing, 

34o 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

as this pagan Christmas of ours is as unlike a 
Christian Christmas? " 

Mrs. Fountain, springing up: "I knew it! I 
knew that it was this Christmas giving that was 
making you morbid again. Can't you shake it 
off and be cheerful — like me? I'm sure I have to 
bear twice as much of it as you have. I've been 
shopping the whole week, and you've been just 
this one afternoon." She begins to catch her 
breath, and fails in searching for her handkerchief 
in the folds of her dress under the bath-robe. 

Fountain, offering his handkerchief: ''Take 
mine." 

Mrs. Fountain, catching it from him, and hiding 
her face in it on the table: "You ought to help 
me bear up, and instead of that you fling yourself 
on my sympathies and break me down." Lift- 
ing her face : ' 'And if it was all a fake, as you say, 
and an illusion, what would you do, what would 
you give people in place of it?" 

Fountain: "I don't know." 

Mrs. Fountain: "What would you have in 
place of Christmas itself?" 

Fountain: "I don't know." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, then, I wouldn't set 
myself up to preach down everything — in a blue 
bath-gown. You've no idea how ridiculous you 
are." 

34* 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Fountain: ''Oh, yes, I have. I can see you. 
You look like one of those blue nuns in Rome. 
But I don't remember any lace on them." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, you don't look like a blue 
monk, you needn't flatter yourself, for there are 
none. You look like — What are you thinking 
about?" 

Fountain: "Oh, nothing. What do you sup- 
pose is in all these packages here? Useful things, 
that we need, that we must have? You know 
without looking that it's the superfluity of naughti- 
ness in one form or other. And the givers of 
these gifts, they had to give them, just as we've 
had to give dozens of gifts ourselves. We ought 
to have put on our cards, 'With the season's bit- 
terest grudges,' 'In hopes of a return,' 'With 
a hopeless sense of the folly,' 'To pay a hateful 
debt,' 'With impotent rage and despair.'" 

Mrs. Fountain: "I don't deny it, Clarence. 
You're perfectly right; I almost wish we had put 
it. How it would have made them hop! But 
they'd have known it was just the way they felt 
themselves." 

Fountain, going on thoughtfully: "It's the cap- 
sheaf of the social barbarism we live in, the hideous 
hypocrisy. It's no use to put it on religion. The 
Jews keep Christmas, too, and we know what they 
think of Christianity as a belief. No, we've got 

342 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

to go further back, to the Pagan Saturnalia — 
Well, I renounce the whole affair, here and now. 
I'm going to spend the rest of the night bundling 
these things up, and to-morrow I'm going to spend 
the day in a taxi, going round and giving them 
back to the fools that sent them." 

Mrs. Fountain: "And I'm going with you. I 
hate it as much as you do — Come in, Maggie!" 

XI 
MAGGIE, MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Maggie: "Something the elevator-boy says he 
forgot. It came along with the last one." 

Mrs. Fountain, taking a bundle from her: "If 
this is another bath-robe, Clarence! It is, as I 
live. Now if it is a woman sending it — " She 
picks up a card which falls out of the robe as she 
unfolds it. "'Love the Giver,' indeed! Now, 
Clarence, I insist, I demand — " 

Fountain: "Hold on, hold on, my dear. The 
last bath-robe that came from a woman was for 
you.' 9 

Mrs. Fountain: "So it was. I don't know what 
I was thinking about; and I do beg your par — 
But this is a man's bath-robe!" 

Fountain, taking the card which she mechani- 
cally stretches out to him : "And a man sends it — 

343 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

old Fellows. Can't you read print? Ambrose 
J. Fellows, and a message in writing: 'It was a 
toss-up between this and a cigar-case, and the 
bath-robe won. Hope you haven't got any other 
thoughtful friends.'" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Oh, very brilliant, giving me 
a start like this! I shall let Mr. Fellows know — 
What is it, Maggie? Open the door, please." 

Maggie, opening: "It's just a District Mes- 
senger." 

Fountain, ironically: "Oh, only a District Mes- 
senger." He signs the messenger's slip, while his 
wife receives from Maggie a bundle which she re- 
gards with suspicion. 

XII 
MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Mrs. Fountain: "'From Uncle Philip for Clar- 
ence.' Well, Uncle Philip, if you have sent 
Clarence — Clarence! 1 ' breaking into a whimper: 
"It is, it is! It's another." 

Fountain: "Well, that only makes the seventh, 
and just enough for every day in the week. It's 
quite my ideal. Now, if there's nothing about a 
cigar-case— Hello!" He feels in the pocket of 
the robe and brings out a cigar-case, from which 
a slip of paper falls : " ' Couldn't make up my mind 

344 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

between them, so send both. Uncle Phil.' Well, 
this is the last stroke of Christmas insanity." 

Mrs. Fountain: "His brain simply reeled under 
it, and gave way. It shows what Christmas really 
comes to with a man of strong intellect like Uncle 
Phil." 

Fountain, opening the case: "Oh, I don't know! 
He's put some cigars in here — in a lucid interval, 
probably. There's hope yet." 

Mrs. Fountain, in despair: "No, Clarence, 
there's no hope. Don't flatter yourself. The 
only way is to bundle back all their presents and 
never, never, never give or receive another one. 
Come! Let's begin tying them up at once; it 
will take us the rest of the night." A knock at 
the door. "Come, Maggie." 

XIII 
JIM AND SUSY, MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Jim and Susy, pushing in: "We can't sleep, 
mother. May we have a pillow fight to keep us 
amused till we're drowsy?" 

Mrs. Fountain, desolately: "Yes, go and have 
your pillow fight. It doesn't matter now. We're 
sending the presents all back, anyway." She be- 
gins frantically wrapping some of the things up. 

Susy: "Oh, father, are you sending them back?" 
345 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Jim: "She's just making believe. Isn't she, 
father?" 

Fountain: "Well, I'm not so sure of that. If 
she doesn't do it, I will." 

Mrs. Fountain, desisting: "Will you go right 
back to bed?" 

Jim and Susy: "Yes, we will." 

Mrs. Fountain: "And to sleep, instantly?" 

Jim and Susy, in succession: "We won't keep 
awake a minute longer." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Very well, then, we'll see. 
Now be off with you." As they put their heads 
together and go out laughing: "And remember, 
if you come here another single time, back go 
every one of the presents." 

Fountain: "As soon as ever Santa Claus can 
find a moment for it." 

Jim, derisively: "Oh, yes, Santa Claus!" 

Susy: "I guess if you wait for Santa Claus to 
take them back!" 

XIV 
MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN 

Mrs. Fountain: "Tiresome little wretches. Of 
course we can't expect them to keep up the self- 
deception." 

Fountain: "They'll grow to another. When 
they're men and women they'll pretend that 

346 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Christmas is delightful, and go round giving peo- 
ple the presents that they've worn their lives out 
in buying and getting together. And they'll work 
themselves up into the notion that they are really 
enjoying it, when they know at the bottom of 
their souls that they loathe the whole job." 

Mrs. Fountain: " There you are with your 
pessimism again! And I had just begun to feel 
cheerful about it!" 

Fountain : * ' Since when ? Since I proposed send- 
ing this rubbish back to the givers with our curse ?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "No, I was thinking what fun 
it would be if we could get up a sort of Christmas 
game, and do it just among relations and intimate 
friends." 

Fountain: "Ah, I wish you luck of it. 'Then 
the thing would begin to have some reality, and 
just as in proportion as people had the worst feel- 
ings in giving the presents, their best feeling would 
be hurt in getting them back." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Then why did you ever think 
of it?" 

Fountain: "To keep from going mad. Come, 
let's go on with this job of sorting the presents, 
and putting them in the stockings and hanging 
them up on the tree and laying them round the 
trunk of it. One thing : it's for the last time. As 
soon as Christmas week is over, I shall inaugurate 

347 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

an educational campaign against the whole Christ- 
mas superstition. It must be extirpated root and 
branch, and the extirpation must begin in the 
minds of the children; we old fools are hopeless; 
we must die in it; but the children can be 
saved. We must organize and make a house-to- 
house fight; and 111 begin in our own house. 
To-morrow, as soon as the children have made 
themselves thoroughly sick with candy and cake 
and midday dinner, I will appeal to their reason, 
and get them to agree to drop it ; to sign the Anti- 
Christmas pledge; to — " 

Mrs. Fountain: " Clarence! I have an idea." 

Fountain: "Not a bright one?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Yes, a bright one, even if 
you didn't originate it. Have Christmas con- 
fined entirely to children — to the very young- 
est — to children that believe firmly in Santa 
Claus." 

Fountain: "Oh, hello! Wouldn't that leave 
Jim and Susy out? I couldn't have them left 
out." 

Mrs. Fountain: "That's true. I didn't think of 
that. Well, say, to children that either believe 
or pretend to believe in him. What's that?" She 
stops at a faint, soft sound on the door. "It's 
Maggie with her hands so full she's pushing with 
her elbow. Come in, Maggie, come in. Come 

348 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

in! Don't you hear me? Come in, I say! Oh, 
it isn't Maggie, of course! It's those worthless, 
worthless little wretches, again." She runs to the 
door calling out, "Naughty, naughty, naughty!" 
as she runs. Then, flinging the door wide, with 
a final cry of "Naughty, I say!" she discovers a 
small figure on the threshold, nightgowned to its 
feet, and looking up with a frightened, wistful 
face. "Why, Benny!" She stoops down and 
catches the child in her arms, and presses him 
tight to her neck, and bends over, covering his 
head with kisses. "What in the world are you 
doing here, you poor little lamb? Is mother's 
darling walking in his sleep? What did you 
want, my pet? Tell mudda, do! Whisper it in 
mudda's big ear ! Can't you tell mudda ? What ? 
Whisper a little louder, love! We're not angry 
with you, sweetness. Now, try to speak louder. 
Is that Santa Claus? No, dearest, that's just 
dadda. Santa Claus hasn't come yet, but he will 
soon. What? Say it again. Is there any Santa 
Claus? Why, who else could have brought all 
these presents? Presents for Benny and Jim and 
Susy and mudda, and seven bath-gowns for dadda. 
Isn't that funny? Seven! And one for mudda. 
What? I can't quite hear you, pet. Are we 
going to send the presents back? Why, who ever 
heard of such a thing? Jim said so? And Susy? 

349 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

Well, I will settle with them, when I come to 
them. You don't want me to? Well, I won't, 
then, if Benny doesn't want mudda to. I'll just 
give them a kiss apiece, pop in their big ears. 
What? You've got something for Santa Claus 
to give them? What? Where? In your crib? 
And shall we go and get it? For mudda too? 
And dadda? Oh, my little angel!" She begins 
to cry over him, and to kiss him again. "You'll 
break my heart with your loveliness. He wants 
to kiss you too, dadda." She puts the boy into 
his father's arms; then catches him back and 
runs from the room with him. Fountain resumes 
the work of filling the long stocking he had be- 
gun with; then he takes up a very short sock. 
He has that in his hand when Mrs. Fountain comes 
back, wiping her eyes. "He'll go to sleep now, I 
guess; he was half dreaming when he came in 
here. I should think, when you saw how Benny 
believed in it, you'd be ashamed of saying a 
word against Christmas." 

Fountain: "Who's said anything against it? 
I've just been arguing for it, and trying to con- 
vince you that for the sake of little children like 
Benny it ought to be perpetuated to the end of 
the world. It began with the childhood of the 
race, in the rejuvenescence of the spirit." 

Mrs. Fountain: "Didn't you say that Christ- 
35° 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

mas began with the pagans? How monstrously 
you prevaricate !" 

Fountain: "That was merely a figure of speech. 
And besides, since you've been out with Benny, 
I've been thinking, and I take back everything I've 
said or thought against Christmas; I didn't really 
think it. I've been going back in my mind to 
that first Christmas we had together, and it's 
cheered me up wonderfully." 

Mrs. Fountain, tenderly: "Have you, dearest? 
I always think of it. If you could have seen 
Benny, how I left him, just now?" 

Fountain: "I shouldn't mind seeing him, and 
I shouldn't care if I gave a glance at poor old 
Jim and Susy. I'd like to reassure them about 
not sending back the presents." He puts his arm 
round her and presses her toward the door. 

Mrs. Fountain: "How sweet you are! And 
how funny! And good!" She accentuates each 
sentiment with a kiss. "And don't you suppose 
I felt sorry for you, making you go round with me 
the whole afternoon, and then leaving you to 
take the brunt of arranging the presents? Now 
I'll tell you: next year, I will do my Christmas 
shopping in July. It's the only way." 

Fountain: "No, there's a better way. As you 
were saying, they don't have the Christmas things 
out. The only way is to do our Christmas shop- 

35* 



THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

ping the day after Christmas; everything will be 

round still, and dog-cheap. Come, well begin 

day after to-morrow/ ' 

Mrs. Fountain: "We will, we will!" 

Fountain: "Do you think we will?" 

Mrs. Fountain: "Well, well say we will." 

They laugh together, and then he kisses her. 
Fountain: "Even if it goes on in the same old 

way, as long as we have each other — " 
Mrs. Fountain: "And the children." 
Fountain. "I forgot the children!" 
Mrs. Fountain: "Oh, how delightful you are!" 



THE END 



